IHH 




■ to — » — M — — ■■■--- — 



LIBRARV OF CONGRESS. 

Co]iuriii' •' J) 

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 






V 






<\ 







\<F 



\\\ 



THE 



Order of the Sciences 



AN ESSAY 



PHILOSOPHICAL CLASSIFICATION AND ORGANIZATION 
OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE 



BY 

CHARLES W. SHIELDS 

PROFESSOR IX PRINCETON COLLEGE 




NEW YORK 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

1882 






m u mi , mi 

THE LIBRARY 

OF CONGRESS 
WASHINGTON 



Copyright, by 
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 



ME»S OF J. J. LITTLE t, CO., 
H09. 13 TO 20 ASTOK PLACE, NEW yj»«. 



PREFACE 



The following essay includes the essential 
parts of a paper read before the Philosophical 
Society of Washington, together with some 
additional matter of an historical and critical 
nature, designed to render it a more complete 
monograph. 

Whilst other classifications and schemes of 
science, which are before the public, such as 
those of Comte and Herbert Spencer, have 
been freely discussed, any sound principles 
upon which they proceed are carefully dis- 
criminated and retained, and the aim has been 
to complete them and advance beyond them to 
still remaining higher problems of philosophy, 
and contribute something toward their solution. 

Princeton College, 
May 22, 1882. 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 



In one of the comedies of Moliere, the phi- 
losopher is represented as becoming furious at 
the soldier for daring to call the profession of 
arms a science, instead of an art ; and at an- 
other time, as posed in a quandary whether he 
should put hats in the category of figures or 
of fashions. So early had a passion for exces- 
sive classification become the butt of even dra- 
matic satire. 

And yet, that the subject has its grave as 
well as comic side, is shown by the fact that 
classifications of the arts and sciences have gone 
on multiplying in spite of repeated failures 
and a general incredulity, and that some of the 
greatest minds in modern times have been ex- 
ercised upon the problem. There never was, 
in truth, more need of a right classification than 
at the present moment. As mere mental and 
social phenomena, the masses of human knowl- 
edge have become too vast and complex to be 



6 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

advantageously treated without some method 
and arrangement; while as intellectual pursuits 
they are so logically connected and interwoven, 
that no one of them can be intelligently culti- 
vated without regard to the rest. Indeed, the 
ascertainment of the true normal order of the 
sciences is not merely a crying want in litera- 
ture and in education, but is an essential part 
of the structure of science itself, without which 
it cannot be matured and completed. For " the 
sciences," said Bacon, " can as little grow apart 
as the branches severed from a common tree." 
And, accordingly, the most note-worthy at- 
tempts to supply this want have come of late 
from scientific thinkers and philosophers rather 
than from professional teachers and enclycopae- 
dists. 

It is plain, moreover, that the classification 
now demanded must be something more than a 
mere artificial arrangement suggested by con- 
venience and taste, and including only the 
superficial resemblances of one science with 
another. It must be real and essential, inher- 
ing in the sciences themselves, reflecting their 
actual relations and mutual dependencies, and 
exhibiting them as members of a logical organ- 
ism, ra the than as mere gradual studies in a 
curriculum or alphabetical topics in a cyclopae- 
dia. And it must have acquired such scientific 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 1 

exactness and value that at length it shall be 
universally adopted to the exclusion of all other 
methods. In a word, it must be philosophical 
rather than pedagogical or encyclopediacal. It 
may be long before we shall see such a classifi- 
cation in use, but the time has at least come to 
offer schemes for consideration. 

It would be a mistake to assume that such 
schemes must proceed from a mere pedantic 
love of method and system, and can be of no 
practical use and influence. Some of the worst 
evils of modern scientific controversy arise from 
the want of a lucid order on the part of other- 
wise clear and vigorous thinkers who have 
treated the sciences as mere disjecta membra, or 
through conceit and prejudice have forced them 
into false, confusing relations, which could not 
but lead to collision and conflict. The current 
disputes in respect to protoplasm, evolution, 
and agnosticism, are examples. And such evils 
are likely to continue until the bounds of the 
sciences have been rigorously defined, and their 
normal ranks and connections become so fixed 
and accepted, that border feuds and trespasses 
will no longer be possible. Nor should we forget 
the positive benefits which may accrue, not 
merely to learned societies, educational institu- 
tions and libraries, but to pure science itself, 
when we have ascertained the limits which sepa- 



8 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

rate our knowledge from our ignorance, and en- 
sured a more economical division of labor among 
the investigators at work in different fields of re- 
search. The classification of sciences, according 
to Whewell, has its chief use in pointing out 
to us the extent of our powers of arriving at 
truth, and the analogies which obtain between 
the certain and lucid portions of knowledge 
and those other moral, political, and metaphys- 
ical portions which are not so advanced and 
perfect. Comte anticipated that a true grada- 
tion of the sciences, when in actual use, would 
regenerate education, both general and scien- 
tific ; and Mr. Herbert Spencer agrees with him 
in thinking that through education it would 
have an immense effect upon civilization. 

At the same time it would be very unwise 
to slight the difficulties of this important ques- 
tion. These are partly inherent in the vast- 
ness of its scope, and the multiplicity of its 
details ; but they have also been greatly aggra- 
vated by the vague, conflicting senses in which 
scientific terms are employed. The problem, 
as stated by Comte, is to choose the one ra- 
tional order out of a host of possible systems, 
as many as seven hundred and twenty being 
alternative to the one which he himself se- 
lected. " The difficulty of defining intimately 
connected studies," says Humboldt, " has been 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 9 

increased, because for centuries it has been cus- 
tomary to designate various branches of empir- 
ical knowledge by terms which admit either of 
too wide or too limited a definition of the ideas 
which they were intended to convey, and are, 
besides, objectionable from having had a dif- 
erent signification in those classical languages 
of antiquity from which they have been bor- 
rowed." The words physics, history, and phil- 
osophy, for example, have lost much of their 
original meaning, and become current in the 
most varied senses. And to this difficulty, it 
should be added, that the ground is already 
pre-occupied, not merely with conspicuous fail- 
ures, but with more or less useful schemes of 
science, which have become traditional through 
long usage, and even illustrious by the great 
names associated with them. 

If we recur to the history of the sciences, we 
shall find that their classification has varied 
with the advancement of exact knowledge, as 
well as with the caprices and fashions of philos- 
ophers. 

At one time, whole sciences have been want- 
ing in the existing scheme, merely because as 
yet they were unknown ; at another time, well 
known sciences have been ignored or depreci- 
ated through some reigning prejudice ; and at 
no time, until quite recently, have they been ar- 



10 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

ranged with any approach to a philosophical or- 
der, from a strictly scientific motive. Indeed, 
such order as did obtain among them, was often 
implied rather than expressed, and can now 
only be discerned in the light of modern dis- 
tinctions. 

Among the early Greeks, after the mystical 
mathematics of Pythagoras, there would seem to 
have existed little more than a sort of crude 
speculative physics until the time of So- 
crates, who added the elements of logic and 
ethics. 

Plato then wrought the existing mass of 
knowledge into the first comprehensive system, 
embracing in his dialectic a general science of 
cognition within which he included the special 
provinces of physics and ethics. Aristotle fol- 
lowed with his more precise delineation of logic 
as the organon or instrument of the sciences, 
which, by a masterly arrangement that has dom- 
inated the schools for centuries, he grouped in- 
to three great divisions, the Theoretical, the 
Practical, the Technical ; the first including math- 
ematics, physics, and metaphysics (primary phi- 
losophy or theology) ; the second including eth- 
ics, economics, and politics ; and the third in- 
cluding technics, aesthetica, and rhetoric ; the- 
ology as the head of the metaphysical realm be- 
ing queen of the theoretical sciences, as the theo- 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 11 

retical are themselves paramount to the practi- 
cal and the technical. 

The Stoics, whilst observing these divisions, 
re-arranged them on the principle that virtue is 
superior to knowledge, by subordinating theo- 
retical to practical science, making logic ancil- 
lary to ethics, and merging theology in physics as 
a science of efficient and final causes. 

The Epicureans, still further depreciating 
theoretical science, restricted logic to a search 
for the ethical canons of a happy life, and ban- 
ished theology even from physics as wholly 
mythical and misleading. 

And at length the Sceptics completed the de- 
basement of pure science by involving it in a 
paradoxical logic and making it the highest 
aim of ethics to abstain from scientific inquiry. 

Among the Romans, as little was added to 
the order as to the content of the sciences, Cicero 
in his philosophical writings having simply 
marshalled them in a rhetorical eclecticism, and 
the elder Pliny having industriously packed 
them away in his Natural History without any 
pretence of scientific method.. 

The Jewish and Christian schools of Alexan- 
dria, by a mystical theory of knowledge an- 
nexed the new domain of revealed theology to 
the ancient empire of Grecian science. 

The Church fathers, whilst restoring theology 



12 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

to her lost kingdom of metaphysics, with the 
exception of Augustine, depreciated and neglect- 
ed the other sciences, though signs of a different 
tendency at length appeared in the encyclopae- 
dical works of Boethius, Cassiodorus, Capella, 
and Alcuin, rival claimants for the time-honored 
scheme of the seven liberal arts and studies. 

But it was reserved for the Scholastics of the 
middle ages to render theology queen of all the 
sciences, both theoretical and practical, physical 
and metaphysical, by making the entire academic 
course, with its trivium (grammar, rhetoric, 
logic) and quadrivium (music, arithmetic, geom- 
etry, astronomy), a mere preparation for the 
study of divinity, like the pedagogic by which 
Grecian and Roman youths had formerly been 
trained for the service of the State. The cyclo- 
paedia or circle of the sciences, arranged in the 
Aristotelian order, was closed within the pale of 
the Church, and philosophy scarcely allowed a 
place outside the theological curriculum. 

The exceptions were such enlightened doctors 
as Roger Bacon, who projected a scheme of 
universal knowledge in his Compendium of Phi- 
losophy ; Vincent of Beauvais, whose Fourfold 
Mirror of History, Nature, Morals and Doctrine 
reflected the entire range of mediaeval learning; 
and Gregory Reisch, whose Margarita Philoso- 
phica or Epitome of every kind of Science, con- 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 13 

stituted, according to Humboldt, the first great 
encyclopaedia from which to date the modern at- 
tempts to classify the various branches of knowl- 
edge. 

It was, however, not until the Reformers had 
fully liberated philosophy in the act of emanci- 
pating theology, that Descartes led forth the 
metaphysical sciences, and Bacon the physical 
sciences, into widening fields of research with 
ever growing harvests of truth. The result is,. 
that for three centuries the different groups of 
sciences, having become independent, not merely 
of theology, but of one another, have been con- 
tending over their boundaries — sometimes for 
dominion, sometimes for existence, the- physical 
with the mental, both with the metaphysical,, 
and at times all with the theological — like the 
rival European sovereignties which meanwhile 
were striving to maintain or extend their discov- 
ered possessions in the new world. But at 
length, with the complete map of the globe, we 
may begin to look for a complete map of science^ 
and already attempt what Bacon finely calls "a 
general and faithful perambulation of learning, 
with an inquiry what parts thereof lie fresh 
and waste, and not improved by the industry 
of man." 

It becomes evident from this glance at the 
history of the sciences, that the problem of 



14 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

their coordination belongs to an advanced pe- 
riod of their development, and can only be 
solved by the combined and successive at- 
tempts of many laborers. Each of the sciences 
must at least have found a name and a place 
in human estimation, in order that all the clas- 
sifiable objects may be fully before us ; and 
even then it would be the height of presump- 
tion and conceit to imagine that by one stroke 
of genius they could be marshalled into per- 
fect order. Not only must we begin with an 
unprejudiced survey of the whole existing mass 
of scientific knowledge, but we must patiently 
examine the classifications of our predecessors, 
carefully weigh their merits and defects, cull 
out the sound principles which have survived 
their failures, and combine them with any we 
have to contribute, and then be content to re- 
gard our own favorite scheme as still but ten- 
tative and approximate — in short, we must pur- 
sue the same modest experimental method by 
which we arrive at all scientific truth. We 
shall do well to continually keep in mind the 
lesson which history plainly teaches, that it is 
only in and by the progress of the sciences 
themselves that their true classification can be 
brought into view, and that all other classifica- 
tions which we may seek to impose upon them, 
will be swept aside as antiquated rubbish, the 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 15 

mere scaffolding and waste-material of a struc- 
ture of which they could form no part. 

At the outset, we need a simple definition of 
science : not a precise, metaphysical definition, 
such as might be reached by only a few minds 
after much thought, and such as will more fit- 
tingly emerge at a later stage of this investiga- 
tion, but a leading conception naturally sug- 
gested by the existing body of scientific knowl- 
edge. The word itself, as derived from scire, 
to know, may serve as such a starting point. 
Science is knowledge, exact knowledge, or ac- 
quaintance with facts, which are the real stuff 
of knowledge, distinguishing it from faith and 
from fancy, which do not always involve facts, 
or may involve error and fiction with them. 
We may believe or imagine what does not ex- 
ist, but we can be said to know only what 
really is. Men have believed, for example, that 
the planets forecast our fortunes, or have im- 
agined them performing a choral dance in their 
orbits; but such superstition or poetry does 
not belong to that portion of exact knowledge 
termed astronomy. 

And yet all exact knowledge is not science. 
There is an animal instinct, or a human sagac- 
ity which, within limits, is precise and certain 
without being scientific. The unreasoning bee 
builds and stores its cell upon mechanical and 



1G THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

chemical principles, and the untaught sailor 
has a weather-wisdom which puzzles the me- 
teorologist. But such intuitive intelligence 
does not constitute the reasoned and approved 
knowledge which multitudes have tested and 
handed down through successive generations 
under the names of chemistry and physics. 

There is also a character of generality in 
scientific knowledge. It not only embraces ob- 
served facts without any admixture of fiction, 
but it embraces them in their actual connec- 
tions, as generalized under the laws or unifor- 
mities of their co-existence and succession. If 
there be a popular wisdom, a traditional ac- 
quaintance with many natural laws and causes, 
which has become crudely condensed in max- 
ims and usages, yet these are very different 
from the systematic bodies of knowledge which 
are found in the physical and some of the men- 
tal and social sciences. 

Other features of science might be discussed, 
such as its power of prevision, its cumulative 
tests, its disinterested aims, its superiority to 
human prejudices and vicissitudes, its dignity 
and utility ; but for the present purpose it may 
be sufficiently defined as exact, verified, syste- 
matic knowledge of facts. If this general defi- 
nition be correct, we must at once eliminate 
certain adjuncts and products of the sciences, 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 17 

which are often confounded with them, but 
which ought not to be admitted into a strictly 
philosophical classification. 

In the first place, it is important that the 
sciences should be distinguished from the var- 
ious branches of mere Learning, which is but 
the vehicle and ornament of science. The lan- 
guages and literatures of different nations, as 
mastered by the scholar, may contain and prop- 
agate a vast amount of scientific knowledge, 
but viewed apart from their content and pur- 
port, they cannot themselves assume a scien- 
tific form until they have been made the 
proper subject of philology and the related 
sciences that deal with the origin and growth 
of dialects, races, and arts. In like manner,' 
History, though susceptible of a scientific char- 
acter, is commonly treated as a mere branch of 
literature or rhetoric. 

In the second place, the sciences should also 
be distinguished from the Arts, which are but 
the applications and aids of science. The in- 
dustrial arts, such as Navigation, Engineer- 
ing, Metallurgy, Agriculture, Manufactures, are 
sometimes loosely called practical sciences, or 
bread-and-butter sciences, because pursued for 
a livelihood rather than for the increase of pure 
knowledge ; and this discrimination is justified 
by the fact that they were for ages practiced, 



18 TIIE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

and may still be practiced by the mere artisan ? 
without much acquaintance with the mechani- 
cal and chemical sciences to which they are re- 
lated, and upon which their greatest advance- 
ment depends. The sesthetical arts, such as 
Architecture, Sculpture, Painting, Music, Ora- 
tory, Poetry, do indeed aim at the beautiful 
rather than the useful, but they have been 
mastered by some of the greatest artists, not 
only in advance, but in ignorance of the cor- 
responding physical and mental sciences whose 
business it is to evolve the principles that are 
involved in every work of art and product of 
the imagination. And even the ethical arts ? 
such as the learned professions of Law, Medi- 
cine, and Divinity, though they presuppose a 
liberal education in all the sciences, and require 
the highest moral aims in the practitioner, 
cannot claim the properly scientific spirit and 
character, inasmuch as they simply apply 
knowledge, rather than accumulate it for 
its own sake. 

In the third place, the sciences should still 
further be distinguished from the disciplinal 
Studies, which are but the instruments and 
processes of science. In the trivium of the 
schools, Grammar, Khetoric, and Logic were 
termed the three arts of discourse, and have 
ever been valued as a training and equipment 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 19 

of the intellectual powers, more than for any 
positive knowledge which they involve. Logic, 
as the science of thought, is simply a branch of 
psychology, while, as the art of reasoning, it 
may properly prescribe the various methods of 
scientific investigation. Mathematics also is a 
pure science of ideas and ideal relations, rather 
than of observed facts and laws, until it be- 
comes mixed with the real sciences, when it 
appears as a higher kind of applied logic, the 
sciences becoming exact in proportion as they can 
be made to assume a mathematical expression. 
And Metaphysics, the science of existence, as 
we shall see further on, is rather a species or 
general division of science than one of the 
sciences themselves, while as a dialectical study 
it serves to discipline the powers of abstrac- 
tion, generalization and comparison, which are 
needed in them all. 

In the fourth place, all the other sciences 
may finally be distinguished from Philosophy, 
which is at once the science and the art of the 
sciences. That much abused word is indeed 
used in various senses. Sometimes it is re- 
stricted to psychology, or mental science, in dis- 
tinction from all physical science. Sometimes 
it is confounded with metaphysics, as when we 
speak of the philosophy of nature or the phi- 
losophy of religion. Sometimes it traverses 



20 THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 

both psychology and metaphysics, as when we 
speak of the idealistic philosophy, the positive 
philosophy, the transcendental philosophy. 
Sometimes it is made equivalent to logic, as 
when we speak of the inductive philosophy, or 
the philosophy of the inductive sciences. And 
sometimes it becomes a name for science in 
general with its various divisions, as when we 
speak of natural philosophy, mental philoso- 
phy, political philosophy, and religious phil- 
osophy. But there is no good reason why it 
should not consistently include all these senses, 
as being that one comprehensive science of the 
sciences, which must embrace both physics and 
metaphysics, together with the mathematics and 
logic involved in their construction. In this 
full meaning of the word, philosophy may be 
said to contain the whole of the sciences, 
while no one of the sciences, not even theo- 
logy, can be said to contain the whole of phil- 
osophy. 

The distinctions which we are urging, may 
be exhibited to the eye in a tabular form, by 
placing together some examples of classifiable 
sciences, though as yet in no definite order, pre- 
ceded by some of the studies which serve as 
their appliances, and followed by* some of the 
arts in which they are themselves practically 
applied. 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 21 

APPLIANCES OF SCIENCE. CLASSIFIABLE SCIENCES. APPLICATIONS OF SCIENCE. 



Letters. 


Studies. 


Astronomy. 


Useful Arts. 


Fine Arts. 


Latin. 


Grammar. 


Chemistry. 


Navigation. 


Painting. 


Greek. 


Rhetoric. 


Psychology. 


Agriculture. 


Music. 


Modern Languages. 


Logic. 


Physics. 


Metallurgy. 


Sculpture. 


Belles Lettres. 


Mathematics 


. Biology. 


Economics. 


Poetry. 


Historiography. 


Dialectics. 


Sociology. 


Manufactures. 


Architecture. 



It need scarcely be said that we are not dis- 
paraging the various branches of literature, the 
practical arts, and the scholastic studies, by 
thus distinguishing them from the positive sci- 
ences with which they are more or less con- 
nected, and often confounded. In the scheme of 
an encyclopaedia, it would be right to include 
all the former with the latter ; and in the scale of 
a curriculum, it might even be proper to place 
some of the former higher than the latter, ac- 
cording as they were to be pursued in a school 
of letters, or in a school of the arts, or in a pro- 
fessional school of law, medicine, or divinity; 
only in a school of science or philosophy would 
they take a lower rank. 

The question of the relative worth and dig- 
nity of human pursuits is not here before us. 
All that we now seek is to iix the sense in 
which words are to be used, by insisting that 
in a philosophical scheme of the sciences should 
be included only those bodies of ascertained 
knowledge which remain distinct and peculiar, 
though they may be expressed ip. elegant liter- 



2 '2 THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 

ature, applied in the useful arts, constructed 
by means of the disciplinal studies, and at 
length logically organized in philosophy. 

In the light of these definitions and distinc- 
tions we may now intelligently examine some 
of the leading classifications which have been 
proposed. We need not stop to notice the 
numerous schemes from Aristotle down to 
Locke, based upon the ethical distinction be- 
tween theoretical and practical knowledge, nor 
the countless projects for correlating the 
sciences with various interests which they sub- 
serve, such as the ecclesiastical division into 
sciences of authority, sciences of reason, and 
sciences of observation ; the civil classification 
of Leibnitz, according to the learned faculties 
and professions ; the academic classification of 
Jeremy Bentham as pedantically set forth in 
his " Chrestomathia," for the instruction of the 
higher classes ; and the bibliographical classifi- 
cation of Koswell Park, whose u Pantology " 
was designed to furnish courses of reading in 
all the sciences and arts, arranged in the form 
of an encyclopediacal tree. The so-called prac- 
tical sciences, or moral and useful arts, having 
been already precluded by our definitions, we 
pass at once to such classifications as are more 
strictly philosophical in their aim. 

Without attempting the excessive refinement 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 23 

of a classification of classifications, we shall find 
it important to observe that they are of two 
sorts, the subjective and the objective ; those 
adjusted to our internal faculties, and those 
adjusted to external realities ; those proceed- 
ing upon the order of ideas in man, and those 
proceeding upon the order of facts in nature. 

First among the former appears the compre- 
hensive scheme employed by Bacon in the 
" Advancement of Learning," and afterwards 
adopted by Daleinbert in the celebrated French 
Encyclopaedia, and by Baron Bielfield, of Prus- 
sia, in his " Elements of Universal Erudition." 
It proceeded upon the psychological principle 
of adjusting the sciences to the mental faculties 
which severally produce them, and are the foun- 
tains of knowledge in the human mind : His- 
tory relating to the memory, Poetry to the 
imagination, and Philosophy to the reason ; the 
first division embracing Civil, Ecclesiastical, 
and Natural History with the Mechanic Arts ; 
the second division (as amended by Dalem- 
bert) embracing Lyric, Epic, and Dramatic 
Poetry, with the Fine Arts ; and the third divi- 
sion embracing Natural Philosophy, both physi- 
cal and metaphysical, Human Philosophy, both 
individual and social, and Divine Philosophy, or 
Theology, both natural and revealed. The beau- 
tiful symmetry displayed through all the numer- 



24 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

ous subdivisions of this scheme and its rhetorical 
convenience for an encyclopediacal treatment 
of the different branches of human learning 
have been often and justly praised, but as a 
strictly scientific arrangement of strictly scien- 
tific knowledge, it has been almost rendered 
obsolete by the advancement of modern science, 
as well as by the searching criticism to which it 
has been subjected. Dugald Stewart, in par- 
ticular, in his preface to the "Encyclopaedia 
Britannica " has shown that its analysis of the 
mental faculties is incomplete, as it does not 
include the powers of abstraction and generali- 
zation ; that memory, imagination, and reason, 
instead of being always separately exercised, 
are often blended in intellectual pursuits ; and 
that consequently in such an arrangement the 
sciences and arts are confused together under 
the same general titles, as for example, meta- 
physics with astronomy, and the mechanic arts 
with civil history. 

Upon the same subjective principle proceeded 
the elaborate scheme devised by the poet-phi- 
losopher, Coleridge, and adopted by the editors 
of the " Encyclopaedia Metropolitana," with the 
view of more strictly separating the scientific 
from the literary and historical material of 
learning, and blending a philosophical with the 
usual alphabetical treatment of such topics. It 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 25 

was based upon the Kantian psychology ; the 
Pure Sciences issuing from the pure reason and 
dealing only with the ideas and acts of the 
mind in itself, and the Mixed Sciences issuing 
from the sensuous understanding and dealing 
with observed phenomena, as combined with ab- 
stract principles : the former being subdivided 
(1) into the Formal Sciences, grammar, rhetoric, 
logic, and mathematics, and (2) the Real Sciences, 
metaphysics, ethics, and theology; and the lat- 
ter being subdivided into (1) Experimental Sci- 
ences, such as mechanics, hydrostatics, optics, 
and (2) Applied Sciences, or the the useful and 
fine arts. The authors of this ingenious classifica- 
tion avowed high moral and didactic motives ; 
but however serviceable it may have proved 
for their purpose, it must be objected to it, as 
to the scheme of Bacon, that it involves psycho- 
logical distinctions which are not sufficiently 
precise or generally accepted. In regard to all 
such schemes, indeed, it may be questioned 
whether psychology, even if it were perfected,, 
would not be too narrow a basis for the whole 
superstructure of the sciences. There would 
seem to be no natural or essential connection 
among them, if they are to be separately con- 
joined with the different mental faculties which 
produce them, and thus artificially arranged as 
mere pursuits of the human intellect. 



20 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

A more logical application of the subjective 
principle, also on the basis of the Kantian meta- 
physics, was afforded by Dr. Whewell in his 
comprehensive work on the Philosophy of the 
Sciences. Instead of adjusting them to the 
mental faculties, he sought to arrange them in 
accordance with the fundamental ideas or con- 
ceptions upon which they proceed : mathemat- 
ics proceeding upon the ideas of space, time, and 
number ; mechanics upon the additional ideas 
of force and motion ; chemistry upon the ideas of 
affinity and likeness ; biology upon the ideas 
of life and final cause; psychology upon the 
ideas of emotion and thought ; the palaetio- 
logical sciences upon the idea of historical 
cause ; and natural theology upon the idea of 
the First Cause ; each following science involv- 
ing also the ideas of its predecessor. In favor 
of this profound and beautiful arrangement, it 
may be urged that it is the result of an histori- 
cal and philosophical study of the sciences 
themselves, pursued with wonderful breadth 
and acuteness of view ; that it rigidly distin- 
guishes the theoretical sciences from the prac- 
tical arts; and that it exhibits them as con- 
catenated in an intelligible, if not strictly logical 
order. Its defects are that it avowedly fore- 
goes any complete classification of the mental 
and social sciences ; that it largely ignores the 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 27 

objective materials or- facts of knowledge for 
the sake of the ideas that mould and combine 
them ; and that it runs out into metaphysical 
questions, concerning which practical men of 
science are not likely to be soon agreed. 

It has been wittily said of Whewell, that 
science was his forte and omniscience his foible ; 
but the logical principle of his classification 
found its extravagant climax in another philos- 
opher, whose fancied omniscience was based 
upon a scorn of real science. The encyclopae- 
dia of Hegel was consistently framed in accord- 
ance with his panlogistic philosophy. Assum- 
ing that whatever is, is rational, that even na- 
ture is but petrified logic, and dialectic the 
process of re-thinking the whole thought of the 
Creator, he essayed by mere syllogistic reason- 
ing, and without any aid from experience, to 
build up a purely ideal series of sciences ; be- 
ginning with logic as the science of abstract 
thought, thence rising through the concrete 
notions successively emerging in the natural 
sciences, mechanics, physics, organics, and 
thence ascending through the more complex 
conceptions of the mental sciences, ethics, poli- 
tics, and religion, towards the fulness of the 
absolute idea in philosophy, embracing thus 
the totality of existence, from zero to infinity, 
in one concatenated process. 



28 THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 

Of this subtle and brilliant construction it 
may be said that it has proved at once the boast 
of the metaphysician and the scandal of the 
scientist. On the one hand, it is claimed as the 
most comprehensive scheme of human know- 
ledge that has ever been devised, and one that 
all future research must verify, and it certainly 
is well adapted to the literary purposes of a 
complete encyclopaedia. But, on the other hand, 
it sins against the first law of true science, by 
assuming that a preconceived order of thoughts 
in our minds must be identical with the actual 
order of things in nature, and then, at every 
step, so blends the metaphysical with the em- 
pirical realms of inquiry as to be practically 
worthless for any strictly scientific purpose. It 
may only serve to illustrate conclusively the 
risk and absurdity of attempting to arrange the 
sciences solely with reference to the human fac- 
ulties or conceptions which they involve, and 
without any regard to those external realities 
and relations upon which they are founded, and 
in accordance with which primarily they should 
be adjusted. 

In passing now to the opposite principle of 
classification, we should observe that it is diffi- 
cult to find a pure example of either method. 
Some of the examples already cited are not 
wholly wanting in the elements of a more nat- 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 29 

ural and scientific arrangement. Bacon, in sub- 
dividing the sciences that proceed from the rea- 
son, grouped them in three great provinces of 
reality, nature, man, and God, as natural, hu- 
man, and divine sciences; and Coleridge, even 
among his sciences of the pure reason, distin- 
guished the real from the formal, while his 
mixed sciences, issuing from the understanding, 
were projected in the external world of phe- 
nomena. In like manner we shall see in the ex- 
amples that are to follow, that the objective or 
empirical principle has not always been exp- 
ensively and consistently applied, and it will 
still be our task to sift the true from the false, 
until we get all the needed data for a final 
judgment. 

A first step toward a sound classification was 
taken by Dugald Stewart, when, in opposition 
to the Baconian, scheme, he suggested the two 
realms of Mind and Matter as chief divisions of 
philosophy, the former to include the Intellec- 
tual, Ethical, and Political sciences, and the lat- 
ter the Mathematical and Natural sciences. 
Without starting the metaphysical question be- 
tween the spiritualist and the materialist, all 
parties will agree that physical and psychical 
phenomena, with their corresponding sciences, 
are clearly distinguishable. And a further ad- 
vance was afterwards made by Neil Arnott, 



30 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

when he arranged these two sets of sciences in 
a pyramidal series, rising from physics to ethics, 
and again by Patrick Dove, whose theory of 
human progression towards a universal reign of 
justice was based upon the supposed order in 
which the seriate sciences come to effect in 
corresponding arts. 

But the constructive, systematizing genius of 
the French seems to have afforded the most 
fruitful soil for the growth of these principles. 
Descartes led the way with his aphorism, first 
broached in the physics of Aristotle, that our 
knowledge proceeds from things easily learned 
to those more difficult, from the simple to the 
complex, from the general to the special; and 
a host of ingenious classifications followed. 
Prominent among them, was the elaborate 
scheme projected by the French physicist, Am- 
pere, and bequeathed as his last scientific at- 
tainment. It was entitled a " Natural classifi- 
cation of all Human Knowledge, " having re- 
sulted from an empirical study of the sciences 
themselves, and was based upon the classifica- 
tory principle by which naturalists arrange ob- 
jects in kingdoms, genera, and species. The 
two most general divisions or kingdoms were 
the cosmological sciences of nature, and the 
noological sciences of mind. The former com- 
prised the two sub-kingdoms of inanimate ob- 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES, 31 

jects and animate objects. Each of these 
again branched into two sections, which were in 
their turn bisected, and this bifurcate division, 
which according to Ampere inheres in the na- 
ture of things, was thus carried through six dis- 
tinct orders of fact, in both the natural and the 
mental world, until as many as one hundred and 
twenty-eight sciences and arts had been enumer- 
ated, with appropriate technical names. The 
artificial symmetry and prolixity of this scheme, 
its cumbrous new-coined nomenclature, and its 
mixture of the arts with the sciences, would 
have been a bar to its adoption, as they may 
have been to a fair discussion of its merits. 
It contained, however, some valuable distinc- 
tions, which still figure in the most recent sys- 
tems, and in particular, the principle upon 
which Ampere insisted, that the sciences ought 
not to be studied in vicious circles, one ever 
recurring into another, but according to the 
serial order in which he had tabulated them. 

A contemporary critic, Cournot, in an " Essay 
on the Foundations of the Sciences, " endeavor- 
ed to combine the principles of Bacon and Am- 
pere in a scheme which was also professedly 
founded upon reality, both relative and abso- 
lute, and for the mental faculties substituted 
certain social temperaments or stages, through 
which human knowledge is supposed to have ad- 



32 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

vanced in space and time, from its crude state in 
religion and art, towards the perfect scientific 
character. These gradations were termed His- 
tory, Philosophy, and Science ; the first embrac- 
ing such subdivisions as geography and civil his- 
tory ; the second, such subdivisions as mytholo- 
gy and theology or metaphysics ; and the third, 
the arts and theoretical sciences. The theoreti- 
cal sciences were then arranged in a series, as- 
cending from the simple to the complex, and 
comprising the mathematical, the physical, the 
biological, the noological, and the political scien- 
ces. Among the advocates of this system was 
Isidore Saint Hilaire, and the historical principle 
which it involved, though it complicated the 
tabular arrangement, was undoubtedly a step 
in the right direction. 

It remained for Auguste Comte, a contem- 
porary of Ampere and Cournot, to embody 
the merits of these systems with but few of 
their defects, in his acute and luminous trea- 
tise termed " The Philosophy of the Positive 
Sciences." Restricting science itself to an em- 
pirical study of facts and their laws, excluding 
theology and metaphysics as a mere unscienti- 
fic search for causes, separating the positive 
sciences from the arts, and still further distin- 
guishing the abstract from the concrete sci- 
ences, Comte then proceeded to arrange the 



TEE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES, 33 

abstract sciences, which he had thus obtained, 
according to the interdependent phenomena to 
which they refer, in the order of their decreas- 
ing generality and simplicity. All natural 
philosophy was first divided into inorganic 
physics and organic physics, corresponding to 
the two most general classes of phenomena. 
The former was then subdivided into celestial 
physics or astronomy, both geometrical and 
mechanical, and terrestrial physics, both me- 
chanical and chemical. Organic physics was 
also subdivided into biology, the science of or- 
ganisms, both vegetal and animal, and sociology, 
the science of associated organisms, both ani- 
mal and human. Five fundamental sciences 
were thus arranged, all of them physical or na- 
tural sciences. Psychology, as distinct from 
biology, was not allowed a place. But a sixth 
science, mathematics, the most abstract study 
of the simplest and most general of all facts, 
was made the foundation and source of the 
whole ascending series of sciences, as being 
itself independent of them, whilst all of them 
are more or less dependent upon it. Astron- 
omy, the next in order, though directly depend- 
ent upon mathematics, is largely independent 
of terrestrial physics by reason of the greater 
generality and simplicity of its data, the hea- 
vens ever affecting the earth, but the earth 

3 



34 THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES, 

scarcely affecting the heavens. Terrestrial 
physics, chemistry, biology, then follow in the 
scale of increasing dependence and complexity, 
until we reach the summit in social physics, 
where the phenomena became so mixed and 
multiform as hitherto to have defied scientific 
investigation. 

In favor of this so-called hierarchy of the 
sciences, Comte ingeniously argued that it is 
the order which the sciences themselves have 
spontaneously assumed, as separately pursued, 
without any effort to arrange them ; that it co- 
incides with their actual historical succession, 
astronomy having long preceded the later-born 
sciences of physics and chemistry ; and also 
that it verifies his own law of their intellectual 
evolution, from the theological through the 
metaphysical into the positive state of exact 
knowledge; mathematics and astronomy having 
already become the most positive of the sciences, 
because most remotely connected with human- 
ity and least exposed to theological and meta- 
physical perversion, whilst biology and social 
physics, being in the thick of human passions 
and interests, are still enveloped in primitive 
superstition and mysticism. To these argu- 
ments, Comte added the practical consideration 
that his gradation of the sciences is the only 
logical order in which they can be successfully 



TEE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 35 

taught and studied in schools of general or 
scientific culture. 

The fascinating simplicity of this scheme, its 
logical convenience, and the large amount of 
truth which it contains, caused it for a time to 
pass unchallenged in the scientific world, until 
at length it became the centre of a wide contro- 
versy among the leading philosophers of the age. 
The most varied views have been taken of its 
general principles and of its details. On the 
one side, Dr. Whewell, in defence of his own 
ideal scheme, resisted the attempt to banish 
metaphysics and theology from the realm of 
science, as not warranted by the history of 
physical discovery, and in itself a pedantic and 
capricious limitation of our knowledge, to 
which the intellect of man neither can nor should 
submit. Professor Huxley, in his trenchant 
manner, remarked that metaphysics was with 
Comte a general term of offence for whatever 
he did not like, and that the sciences, instead of 
being like steps in a ladder, are but branches 
from the common stem of molecular physics. 
Mr. Herbert Spencer, in vindication of his own 
originality as well as in opposition to the whole 
Comtean classification, more directly assailed its 
distinctive principles, maintaining that its serial 
arrangement of the sciences, though requisite for 
literary purposes, has no basis either in nature or 



36 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

in history, since phenomena never occur logically, 
least of all in the supposed hierarchical order, 
andfcbecause the sciences have been simulta- 
neous rather than successive in their progress; 
the simple depending upon the complex as 
well as the complex upon the simple ; astronomy 
alone having owed at least ten important dis- 
coveries to the later physics and chemistry. 
Professor John Fiske, of Harvard, one of the 
most discriminating critics of the system, united 
with Mr. Spencer in showing that Comte had 
strangely mixed up the abstract with the con- 
crete sciences in his hierarchy; mathematics, 
physics, and chemistry with astronomy, biology, 
and sociology ; and that the true historic order 
of their succession is spiral rather than linear, 
being not alone due to the relative generality 
of phenomena, but also and much more largely 
due to their relative conspicuousness, their fre- 
quency, their concreteness and the varying means 
of investigating them. While both critics were 
thus agreed in renouncing the serial principle 
as worthless, they further argued that the whole 
metaphysical region, which Comte had simply 
ignored, must in the nature of the case be 
unknowable. 

On the other side of the debate appeared 
Mr. Lewes, whose " Biographical History of 
Philosophy" was written to prove that theol- 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 37 

ogy and metaphysics have for centuries been 
steadily retreating before the march of the 
Positive Philosophy, and who accepted ' ' its 
luminous conception of a new and final classi- 
fication of the sciences as evincing a gigantic 
force of philosophic thought." Professor Bain 
also virtually adopted it in his Logic. M. 
Littre, the most distinguished French disciple 
of Comte, besides defending the originality of 
his master from the attacks of the English 
critics, replied that the true normal order of the 
sciences may be observed in their constitutions, 
and still holds objectively in things in accord- 
ance with the increasing complexity of phenom- 
ena, howsoever it may be reversed and confused 
in our minds by the abstracting and generaliz- 
ing faculties. Mr. John Stuart Mill, by far the 
ablest and most judicious exponent of the sys- 
tem, also stood with Littre* for its defence, 
maintaining that at least it served its purpose 
as a logically convenient arrangement, and that 
it is historically true, not, indeed, that one of 
the sciences has been finished before another 
was begun, but that they have proceeded to- 
gether towards perfection at unequal rates in the 
order of their difficulty, the simple ever in ad- 
vance of the complex, though with mutual aid 
and acceleration ; and moreover that the alleged 
mixture of the concrete with the abstract sci- 



38 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

ences is but a verbal objection, astronomy or 
celestial physics being an abstract as well as 
concrete science. The French and the English 
defender of Comte were not only thus united 
in retaining the serial principle as essential, but 
also in abstaining from any metaphysical specu- 
lation as to the ultimate limits of knowledge. 

As the outcome of this controversy we now 
have another classification, proposed by Mr. 
Spencer, and amended by Mr. Fiske, which in 
place of a linear series of ascending ranks, 
would substitute three collateral groups of sci- 
ences, one distinguishable from another accord- 
ing to the degree of their logical abstractness : 
the Abstract Sciences, the Abstract-Concrete 
Sciences, and the Concrete Sciences; the first 
to include sciences of ideal relations^ viewed 
apart from all facts, such as logic and mathe- 
matics; the second to include sciences of real 
relations, implicated in certain classes of facts, 
such as mechanics, physics, and chemistry ; and 
the third to include sciences of aggregated 
facts, involving both ideal and real relations, 
such as astronomy, geology, and biology. These 
groups, though not to be put in a serial order, 
are further defined as instrumental with respect 
to one another, the first with respect to the 
second and third, and the second with respect 
to the third only, while they furnish material 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 39 

to one another in an inverse order, the third to 
the , second, and the second and third to the 
first. Each great group of sciences, moreover, 
is to be divided into numerous sub-groups, on 
the same principle of logical abstractness and 
universality. 

Mr. Fiske, in adopting the classification of Mr. 
Spencer, has condensed and re-stated it, so that 
the Abstract Sciences, dealing with relations that 
are qualitative and quantitative, shall include 
logic and mathematics ; the Abstract- Concrete 
sciences, dealing with properties that are man- 
ifested in masses and molecules, shall include 
molar physics, molecular physics and chemis- 
try ; and the Concrete Sciences, dealing with 
aggregates as actually exemplified in the 
heavens, in the earth, and in living organisms, 
shall include astronomy, geology, biology, psy- 
chology and sociology. Into each one of these 
five concrete sciences he would introduce a sub- 
division, referring to the evolution of phenom- 
ena from an ancient to the present condition ; 
astrogeny, dealing with the genesis of the stel- 
lar and planetary systems; geogeny, dealing 
with the genesis of our globe ; biogeny, dealing 
with the genesis of species ; psycogeny, with the 
genesis of mental faculties and feelings; and 
sociogeny, with the genesis of moral and politi- 
cal institutions. Both of these distinguished 



40 TEE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

thinkers were agreed in substituting for the 
linear procession of the sciences a complex 
spiral movement of combined analysis and syn- 
thesis, the concrete sciences ever reacting upon 
the abstract, and the abstract ever stimulating 
the concrete. 

The elegance and perspicuity of this scheme 
have been justly praised, and as far as it goes, 
its general accuracy and logical serviceableness 
need not be questioned. But it has been inci- 
sively remarked by Mr. Stuart Mill, that it is 
an attempt to classify the sciences, not accord- 
ing to their subject matter or mutual relations, 
but according to an unimportant difference in 
the manner in which we come to know them; 
or, as Mr. Spencer himself expresses it, accord- 
ing to the order in which they may be built up 
in the human consciousness. In other words, it 
retains a shred of the vicious subjective method, 
upon which we have already animadverted, be- 
ing to some extent an ideal arrangement, based 
upon our modes of knowing, rather than upon 
things known: and although as such, it may be 
true and useful, yet to marshal the sciences 
merely with reference to our logical conveni- 
ence in cultivating them, would seem to be no 
more philosophical than to arrange them with 
reference to their ethical value, or their rhetorical 
symmetry, or their practical importance. More- 



TEE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 41 

over, it should be observed that Mr. Fiske, whilst 
avowedly rejecting the serial principle, has im- 
plicitly re-admitted it into his group of concrete 
sciences, by adjusting them to the evolutionary 
succession of phenomena. After all that may 
be said in praise of this latest and best scheme, 
it does not seem likely that it will be accepted 
as complete and final; and the problem still re- 
mains, by a more careful analysis, to reject the 
discovered errors, and combine the residual 
truths of previous systems. 

In now attempting this difficult problem, we 
shall pursue the method of successively enuncia- 
ting the principles of a sound philosophical 
classification, and applying them, as far as pos- 
sible, to the existing state of scientific knowl- 
edge ; premising that the full force of these 
principles will better appear from a combined 
view of them, than from a separate estimate of 
any one of them, and least of all, of the one 
first to be stated. 

I. A philosophical scheme of the sciences 
should he hosed wpon the facts which support 
them, rather than upon the ideas which they 
involve. 

It is not meant that the most concrete sci- 
ences do not involve ideas and ideal relations, nor 
yet that the most abstract sciences may not be 
evolved from facts as actually connected, but 



42 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

simply, that inasmuch as facts afford the foun- 
dation and material of knowledge, the order of 
facts, if it can be ascertained, should be allowed 
to determine the order of the sciences which 
are built upon them. While there may be 
some truth and much convenience in ideal clas- 
sifications, yet being ideal and not empirical, 
they may have been largely preconceived in ad- 
vance of experience, and in using them we shall 
be in danger of imposing upon facts an artifi- 
cial arrangement of our own which they will not 
bear, and thus driving the sciences into false and 
hurtful connections. But when we shall have 
discovered the distinctions and relations which 
actually obtain among facts, there will then be 
revealed to us the solid foundations upon 
which to begin to erect the whole superstruc- 
ture of real knowledge. 

A strict application of this principle would 
exclude the abstract sciences of Logic and 
Mathematics from a philosophical classification, 
and retain them as disciplinal studies, until by 
being employed in empirical investigations, 
they acquire a content of positive knowledge, 
when they simply become parts and processes 
of other more real sciences. And in this view 
of their aim and scope, the chief authorities are 
substantially agreed, with the exception of the 
few German metaphysicians, such as Hegel 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 43 

and Oken, who have held that logic is the es- 
sential science of nature, and mathematics the 
original and substantial framework of the uni- 
verse. Indeed, for the same reason, the whole 
distinction between the abstract and the con- 
crete sciences, being one that is in our thoughts 
rather than in things, may be disregarded, and 
the two condensed into a single series to be 
simply termed Fundamental Sciences, based 
upon actual relations which obtain among 
facts. We proceed to complete a list of such 
sciences by the aid of the next principle. 

II. A 'philosophical scheme of the sciences 
should fully reflect all the distinct classes of 
facts which have been scientifically ascertained. 

As the important distinctions among facts 
do not lie patent on the face of nature, but 
are to be learned in the progress of science 
itself, it follows that the right classification of 
the sciences must proceed with their own de- 
velopment, as one set of phenomena after an- 
other is distinguished and subjected to scien- 
tific methods, until the circle of known and 
knowable facts is complete. And no classifica- 
tion can be complete which ignores any such 
group of phenomena. It would be as unphil- 
osophical to exclude a class of facts from mere 
dislike of them, or through some prejudice 
against investigating them, as it would be to 



44 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

include mere abstractions or notions for which 
one may have a fancy. The aim should be to 
admit every group of phenomena which nature 
presents for investigation, and which science 
has clearly brought into view as regulated by 
laws, even though those laws may not have 
been ascertained, and as yet seem scarcely as- 
certainable. For we are not to measure the 
uniformity of nature by the degree of precis- 
ion in our knowledge of it ; and history warns 
us that it would be rash to declare any class of 
facts too complex, remote, or recondite to be 
ever mastered by the processes of science. 

Applying this principle, we may begin with 
the general obvious distinction between mate- 
rial facts and mental facts, as aifording ground 
for the two chief groups of the physical and 
the psychicccl sciences. Let it be observed that 
this is not necessarily a metaphysical distinction. 
We here abstain from any inquiry into the es- 
sential nature of matter or mind. You may 
hold that they are two diverse substances, or 
that mind is a mere form of matter, or matter 
a mere form of mind, or both mere modes of 
some third inscrutable essence or force. In 
either or any case the distinction will still ap- 
pear in phenomena themselves, viewed apart 
from any deeper foundation which it may or 
may not have in the ontological region beneath 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 45 

them. And it is a distinction which has been 
so universally accepted that we cannot speak 
in any language without recognizing it, how- 
ever little practical importance some may at- 
tach to it. When, therefore, Comte would 
have arbitrarily ignored this distinction, and 
merged the mental, moral, and political sciences 
in physics, he simply confused classes of facts, 
which are at least as distinguishable as mechan- 
ical from chemical, or chemical from vital phe- 
nomena. And in this attempt to obliterate a 
whole group of sciences, he has not by any 
means been followed by his own disciples, not 
even by those who take a materialistic view 
of mental processes, still less by such critics as 
Lewes and Spencer. Even Stuart Mill, though 
adopting the Comtean hierarchy, is careful to 
amend it by inserting psychology between biol- 
ogy and sociology, insisting that mental phenom- 
ena, with their laws already so largely ascer- 
tained, afford material for a distinct and inde- 
pendent science, however intimately connected 
it may be with the neighboring regions of physi- 
ology and sociology. But when he adds that 
with the prospective establishment of sociology 
among the sciences " the circle of human knowl- 
edge will be complete, and it can only there- 
after receive further enlargement by perpetual 
expansion from within," he seems not to have 



46 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

observed or remembered that there is still an- 
other class of facts quite as .distinct as mental 
or social facts, though largely implicated with 
them, and quite as susceptible, it may be, of 
scientific investigation. Indeed, a surmise of 
their scientific character may be said to have 
long ago appeared in certain philosophers 
having no professional interest in them, such 
as Machiavelli, St. Simon, Hume, who have 
sought to construct a natural history of relig- 
ion. Mr. Mill himself has suggested, in his 
last work, that the doctrines of religion should 
be treated as scientific theorems, to be tested 
like any of the speculative conclusions of phys- 
ical science. M. Emile Burnouf claims to have 
founded a science of religions upon compara- 
tive ethnology, with good hopes of determining 
the laws of their evolution. And we have the 
authority of a distinguished philologist, Pro- 
fessor Max Miiller, for retaining in this field of 
research the time-honored name of Theology, 
Comparative and Theoretic Theology. It is 
true, Professor Miiller doubts whether the 
common classification of religions as natural 
and revealed, will any longer serve the purposes 
of science ; but that is a question partly empi- 
rical and partly metaphysical, which can only 
be settled by the proper scientific methods. 
Whatever views may be taken of the origin 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 4:7 

and essential basis of religious phenomena, 
whether the subjective and the objective fac- 
tors in their production are homogeneous or het- 
erogeneous, the phenomena themselves cannot 
be questioned, both the new school of compar- 
ative theologians and the old school of profes- 
sional divines being now agreed, though from 
different stand-points, in treating such phenom- 
ena scientifically. Nor can it be doubted that 
with the admission of theology among the em- 
pirical sciences, the only remaining class of 
facts is compassed, and the circle of human 
knowledge becomes complete. 

It appears, therefore, that the progress of 
science has brought into view six distinct 
classes of facts, affording ground for as many 
corresponding groups of fundamental sciences: 
the Physical, the Chemical, the Organical, the 
Psychical, the Social, and the Religious. Each 
of these groups will be found to have several 
divisions, more or less distinct, according to the 
degree of its advancement towards the perfect 
scientific character. Physical Science embraces 
Molar Physics or Mechanics, dealing with mate- 
rial masses at rest and in motion ; and Molecu- 
lar Physics, dealing with the molecular undu- 
lations or ethereal vibrations of sound, heat, 
light, electricity and galvanism. Chemical 
Science embraces Inorganic Chemistry, deal- 



48 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

ing with the combination of atoms or ele- 
ments in definite proportions; and Organic 
Chemistry, dealing with the re-composition of 
molecules in organized bodies. Organical or 
Biological Science embraces Botany, dealing 
with the different orders of plants, from the 
fungus up to the oak; and Zoology, dealing 
with the different orders of animals, from the 
mollusk up to man, the flower and head of or- 
ganic nature, with his varied races, languages 
and arts.. Psychical Science embraces Psychical 
Statics, dealing with the nervous functions and 
mental faculties, the senses, the intellect and 
the will ; and Psychical Dynamics, dealing with 
the laws of mental processes in sensation, 
thought and emotion. Social Science embraces 
Social Statics, dealing with the organization 
of individuals into the family, the state and 
humanity ; and Social Dynamics, dealing with 
the laws of social evolution from barbarism to 
civilization. Religious Science embraces Com- 
parative Theology, dealing with the great 
ethnic and general religions; and Theoretic 
Theology, dealing with the development of 
essential or absolute religion. 

It will be seen, by a glance at this scheme, 
that while the physical sciences have obtained 
a large degree of fullness and precision, the 
psychical sciences are still somewhat crude and 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 49 

indistinct : but the recent history of the latter 
already proves their analogy with the former. 
In mental science there has been a steady pro- 
gress since the elder Mill began to formulate 
the laws of association anions; ideas. In social 
science, from the time of Vico, we have been 
growing familiar with the laws of historic 
recurrence and average progress, evolution 
through revolution, advanced individuals stim- 
ulating society, and advanced society still carry- 
ing forward individuals in ever ascending stages 
of civilization. And even in religious science 
Bishop Butler long ago threw out the bold con- 
jecture that the entire history of the Christian 
scheme of redemption, with all its miraculous 
phenomena, if viewed by an adequate intelli- 
gence, would appear as much regulated by 
general laws as the march of the seasons or the 
growth of a flower. 

Assuming now these six fundamental scien- 
ces to rest upon as many distinct classes of facts, 
we find the actual connections of those classes 
of facts still to be considered. And to this 
problem may be applied our third principle. 

III. A philosophical scheme of the sciences 
should exhibit all classes of facts in their actual 
connections as co-existent in space and successive 
in time. 

It need scarcely be said, that the several 



50 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

classes of facts, as found in nature, are in a fixed 
order which is never reversed or confused. 
If their existing collocations and successions 
should be extensively deranged ; if, for example, 
the earth should be placed abruptly nearer the 
sun, or teem anew with primeval ferns and mon- 
sters, the present cosmos would simply collapse 
in chaos. We may, indeed, within narrow lim- 
its, modify the natural order of phenomena, and 
take a class of facts out of their due place 
and time, for the purposes of a scientific experi- 
ment ; or, leaving the natural order undisturbed, 
we may confine our attention exclusively to one 
set of phenomena, without regard to others that 
precede and accompany it, in order to make our 
knowledge of it more exact and thorough. 
Indeed, the whole scientific procedure consists 
very largely and necessarily in such special and 
separate investigations. But nature itself is 
not the medley that our methods might make 
it, and does not present phenomena to us in 
detached fragments. Full knowledge of them 
must include their real associations as part of 
th eir reality ; and in a philosophical scheme of the 
sciences, which is to be natural rather than ar- 
tificial, real rather than ideal, we must not only 
lay the foundation in distinct classes of facts, 
but rear the whole superstructure in accordance 
with the actual connections of those classes of 



TEE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 51 

facts. In other words, we must deal with phe- 
nomena as we find them co-existing together 
in space and succeeding one another in time. 
And we may obviously do this without any 
metaphysical inquiry into the relation of time 
and space to our cognitive faculty, by simply 
taking th'em as the two forms in which all phe- 
nomena are contained or presented. 

Of spacial connections the most general and 
obvious is that between the heavens and the 
earth. While the progress of science has shown 
that celestial space as compared with terres- 
trial space is practically infinite, yet it has also 
shown that every class of facts disclosed in the 
heavens obeys the same laws which govern the 
corresponding class of facts displayed upon the 
earth, and that the advance of our knowledge 
is from the adjacent to the remote phenomena. 
As Mr. Spencer has otherwise expressed it: 
" Before mankind scientifically co-ordinated 
any one class of phenomena displayed in the 
heavens, they had previously co-ordinated a 
parallel class of phenomena displayed upon the 
surface of the earth." This at least is true of 
the more advanced physical sciences. Celestial 
physics is but an extensive application of ter- 
restrial physics. The great mechanical laws 
which keep the planets in their orbits around 
the sun were first observed in the falling of an 



59 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

apple and the swinging of a chandelier; and 
though Stuart Mill could fancy that two and 
two may not appear equal to four among the 
inhabitants of the Dog-star, yet astronomers 
are showing us that the stars themselves behave 
with as much mathematical propriety as the 
angles and curves upon a slate. The waves of 
light and heat from the sun are the same as 
those from a candle. 

In like manner, the new celestial chemistry is 
but a wonderful expansion of terrestrial chemis- 
try. The meteoric stone dropped from a neigh- 
boring planet or from beyond the solar system 
brings no new substance into the laboratory; 
and the spectroscope is exhibiting the gases and 
metals of nebulae, stars and galaxies as plainly 
as they may be seen in the products of the re- 
tort and the crucible.* 

Even the organical sciences, as far as we now 
know them upon earth, are beginning to project 
sound analogies respecting the physical and 
chemical conditions of life in other worlds, as 
exemplified in the clouds and seas of Venus, 



* This principle, as first stated in the author's work on "The 
Final Philosophy," seems to have been strangely misapprehended 
by a learned German critic : — " Jede dieser Wissenschaften soil 
einen ' himmlische ' und einen ■ irdischen' Theil haben. Was 
bedeutet nun aber z. B. ' himmlische,' Chemie ? Wodurch soil 
sich diese von der irdischen Chemie unterscheiden?" — Philo- 
8op7iische MonaUhefte. 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 53 

and the polar snows and continents of Mars, 
when contrasted with the gaseous nucleus of 
the comet or the extinct craters of the moon. 
And if the kingdom of the physical sciences 
has already been made to embrace all celestial 
as well as terrestrial provinces, is it wholly 
unreasonable to look for alike extension of the 
psychical sciences ? The objections to such an 
expectation are in fact popular rather than 
philosophical, and all in the face of scientific 
precedent and analogy. " No biologist," says 
Lewes, " would listen patiently if asked, what 
are the flora and fauna of Jupiter ? " No 
chemist, it might be replied, would have lis- 
tened at all twenty years ago, if asked whether 
there is any iron in the sun, or any hydrogen in 
Sirius ? Not a hundred years since, it would 
have been deemed visionary, if not impious, to 
think of measuring the bulk, weight and peri- 
ods of the heavenly bodies, as it still seems 
scarcely credible that we are beginning to trace 
their chemical constitution and climatic fea- 
tures; and if any of them should yet exhibit 
the organic conditions of ps} T chical phenomena, 
through some sethereal thrill of which we can- 
not now conceive, this would only be what the 
physicist might expect as the flower of the 
cosmic life, and wha't the divine is prepared to 
accept on other grounds. Professor Tyndall 



5-1 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

has already said substantially that all our poli- 
tics, art, and philosophy are but consequences 
of the refrigeration of a cooling planet whirled 
off from the sun ; and the eloquent Chalmers, 
though he thought it might be overstepping the 
modesty of true science to speculate concerning 
the mineralogy and botany of other globes, 
could still argue from the analogy of celestial 
mechanics that our terrestrial ethics must agree 
with the celestial ethics, dominating all the 
higher intelligences with which his creed had 
peopled the distant places of the universe. Be 
that as it may, with this new spectroscopic 
apocalypse of the heavens opening before* ns, it 
is too soon to debar the celestial realms which 
have not yet been explored, as forever conjec- 
tural and unknowable. It will be enough to 
inscribe them as terra incognita on the map of 
science. That map will be incomplete without 
them, not merely because theoretically the field 
of research must be held to be co-extensive with 
the domain of nature ; but also because celes- 
tial and terrestrial phenomena, instead of being 
simply collocated, are connected, and so inti- 
mately connected that together they already 
form one vast mechanism governed by uni- 
versal law, and may yet also appear as one 
mighty organism pervaded with life and reason. 
As to the succession of phenomena in time, 



TEE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 55 

science has shown that they proceed from the 
simple to the complex. Although the differ- 
ent classes of facts are distinct and separate, 
yet they are found succeeding one another in a 
fixed order of mutual dependence and increas- 
ing multiformity, each involving its predeces- 
sor, and becoming a condition precedent to its 
successor; and with such actual procession of 
phenomena must correspond, according to our 
doctrine, the normal procession, of the sci- 
ences. This important principle, first an- 
nounced but imperfectly applied by Comte, 
may be easily tested by tracing it through the 
series of fundamental sciences which we have 
enumerated, as well as by showing what con- 
fusion would arise, both in nature and in our 
minds, if that series were broken, reversed, or 
deranged. 

Beginning with the physical or mechanical 
sciences, we find them plainly preceding and sup- 
porting the chemical sciences. The phenomena 
of moving masses and undulating molecules 
occur before, and independently of their combi- 
nation in different kinds of matter, and may be 
studied quite apart from any inquiry into the 
elementary constitution of bodies, and even 
experimentally separated for special investiga- 
tion. The physicist need know but little of 
chemistry so long as he deals only with the 



50 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

forces of gravitation, heat, light, electricity 
which play between masses outside of mole- 
cules, or in the all-pervading ether. 

In like manner, a step higher in the ascending 
series the chemical sciences are found to rest 
upon the physical, while they uphold the or- 
ganical sciences. The phenomena of combin- 
ing atoms, as shown by different kinds of inor- 
ganic matter, though largely conditioned by 
the physical forces of gravitation and heat, and 
often attended with light and electricity, are 
themselves distinct and separate, having their 
own laws of affinity and likeness, and are, at 
the same time, quite independent of the next 
and more complex phenomena of organic or 
living matter with which they have no abso- 
lute and invariable connection. The chemist, 
therefore, should know much of physics, if he 
would understand the conditions of weight and 
temperature under which atoms will unite to 
form the compounds with which he deals ; but 
he need know little or nothing of biology, un- 
less he chooses to advance into the region of 
so-called organic chemistry, with the view of 
studying the composition of living tissues. 

And so, in their turn, the organical sciences 
will be found to have a basis in the chemical, 
and afford a basis for the psychical sciences. 
The phenomena of living organisms, such as 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 57 

plants and animals, thoagh largely predeter- 
mined by tlie physical forces of heat and light, 
and constantly involving the chemical compo- 
sition and decomposition of the organic ele- 
ments, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and carbon, 
are nevertheless unique and accessional, having 
their own laws of life and growth, and can as 
little be confounded with the psychical, or 
mental phenomena which supervene only in 
organisms of the highest class. It is true that 
organisms re-act upon the physical forces of 
gravitation, heat, light, and electricity as ap- 
pears in swift-flying birds, warm-blooded ani- 
mals, luminous insects, and electric fishes; and 
it is also true that they resist or- repair chem- 
ical disintegration as well as evolve new chem- 
ical processes and compounds. And these are 
simply further reasons why the biologist must 
know something of physics, and much of chem- 
istry in order to master the endless varieties of 
organic structure and function with which he 
has to deal ; but he may remain in scornful ig- 
norance of the whole realm of mental science, 
unless he cares to wander into the dim border- 
land of so called animal psychology in search 
of the germs or semblances of human faculties 
and feelings. 

Leaving material nature beneath us and ascend- 
ing into the psychical sciences, we find them 



58 THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 

resting upon all the organical, chemical, and phy- 
sical sciences below them, and at the same time, 
sustaining the social and religious sciences above 
them. Although the phenomena of sensation, 
emotion, and thought, are closely implicated 
with the senses, the nerves, and the brain, yet 
they are clearly distinguishable from any mo- 
lecular movements in the organism as addi- 
tional facts of consciousness, having their own 
laws of association and reasoning ; while on the 
other side, by their individuality and seclusion, 
they stand apart from the more complex phe- 
nomena of society. It is true that the mind 
largely derives from its whole physical environ- 
ment the impressions which it forms into cog- 
nitions and conceptions; and it is also true that 
it is greatly modified by its whole social envi- 
ronment through other like minds with which 
it is connected in constant interaction. And 
hence it is that physiology is the proper door 
through which to ascend into psychology, where 
each may rest as sole sovereign in the empire of 
conscious thought and action, unless he would 
advance into the higher and broader region of 
observed thought and action, by the steps of 
comparative psychology, as shown in the mental 
manifestations of savages, of children, and of 
different classes of civilized men. 

On that* higher plane of inquiry, the social 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 59 

sciences would then present themselves as the 
next following link between the mental and 
the religious sciences. As all society exists op- 
tentially in the individual, and is but composed 
of individuals, the phenomena of associated hu- 
man beings, as seen in the constitution and his- 
tory of different tribes, nations, and races, can- 
not be wholly detached from the individual or- 
ganisms which have combined to produce them ; 
and yet they occur in a region outside of perso- 
nal consciousness and volition, as general result- 
ant facts of human nature and human action, 
governed by their own laws of recurrence, in- 
heritance, and progress, which no combination 
of indivdual wills, not even legislation or revo- 
lution, can thwart or set aside. The immense 
diversity and complexity of modern civilization, 
involving as it does the intellectual and moral 
products of all climes and ages, have indeed 
seemed to make a science of sociology imprac- 
ticable, and some have even thought it also ir 
reverent, because of an imagined inconsistency of 
social laws with the Divine will. It is to be 
approached through the preliminary sciences of 
geography, ethnology, archaeology, and historiog- 
raphy, and should j:>roperly be restricted to the 
mental and moral laws of social organization 
and development; since the higher and final class 
of religious phenomena, if sought in this direc- 



60 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

tion, can only be reached by a further ascent 
through comparative theology, in the study of 
the different religions of mankind. 

Emerging at length, by this new method of ap- 
proach, into the religious sciences, we find them 
at once distinct and pre-eminent. No other and 
higher class of facts remains, and therefore no 
further class of sciences. The religious phe- 
nomena of humanity, though deeply involved 
in both the individual and the social organism, 
are nevertheless themselves presented in an ex- 
tra-human or superhuman region, by what the 
latest scientific thought defines as the Absolute 
Reality, unknowable and inconceivable, how- 
soever practically treated, whether as a mere 
ideal personification or as a real personality. 

And thus, at the summit of the sciences 
we have reached a limit which divides the empir- 
ical from the metaphysical region of inquiry. 
But into that transcendental realm we are not 
yet ready to venture. Turning to retrace our 
steps, let us still further test the series in a de- 
scending order, by imagining one supporting 
link after another removed or displaced. Take 
away the social laws which uphold religious 
phenomena in history, and nothing of religion 
would be left but savage superstition or sub- 
jective illusion. Take away the mental laws 
which uphold social phenomena, and there 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 61 

could be no organization and development but 
that of animal tribes revolving in the same cir- 
cles from generation to generation. Take away 
the organical laws which uphold mental phe- 
nomena, and the intellect of man, alike with 
the instinct of the brute, would disappear. 
Take away the chemical laws which uphold or- 
ganic phenomena, and the whole vegetable 
world would wither away into a volcanic waste. 
Take away the physical laws, which uphold 
chemical phenomena, and nought would remain 
but an inorganic mass. Ascend or descend the 
scale of nature, you find its ranks nowhere 
broken, and never inverted. And the concatena- 
ted classes of facts require corresponding orders 
of concatenated sciences. However much either 
the sciences or the facts may overlap and re- 
turn into each other, they still form one com- 
pact series, like a spiral staircase winding from 
earth to heaven. 

We have seen how facts are connected in 
space, and how they are connected in time ; but 
it still remains to connect these connections, in 
order fully to adjust the scheme of the sciences 
to the actual framework of nature. Now the 
progress of research has already begun to show 
that the same procession of phenomena from 
the simple to the complex which obtains upon 
the earth, prevails also, in part at least, through- 



62 THE ORB PR OF THE SCIENCES. 

out the heavens, and therefore the sciences, con- 
forming to the phenomena, combine a collateral 
with their linear arrangement, embracing spa- 
cial comprehension in the temporal succession. 
In other words, physical science, in both its ce- 
lestial and terrestrial provinces, precedes and 
supports chemical science, as chemical science, in 
both its celestial and terrestrial provinces, rests 
upon physical and precedes organical science. 
Mr. Spencer, by his magnificent doctrine of uni- 
versal evolution through space and time, has un- 
wittingly afforded a foundation for this vast se- 
rial arrangement ; and Mr. Fiske has aided it, 
while repudiating it, by suggesting sciences of 
development or genesis, such as astrogeny, bi- 
ogeny, sociogeny, which exactly comply with 
its conditions. It would be easy, in accordance 
with such views, to trace the successive sci- 
ences through the successive stages of that 
mighty development whieh is supposed to have 
proceeded from an indefinite antiquity through- 
out immensity; the physical sciences, as dis- 
played in the ancient sidereal nebulae, revolving 
and condensing into galaxies, suns, and planets, 
radiating heat and light ; the chemical sciences, 
as displayed in the molten core and hardened 
crust of our earth, with its slowly forming 
strata of rocks and soils ; the organical sciences, 
as displayed in the flora and fauna which have 



THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 63 

flourished and decayed, with increasing com- 
plexity and refinement of structure, until at 
length man appeared as the paragon of animals ; 
the psychical sciences, as displayed through 
the varying scale of sense, instinct, understand- 
ing and reason, infant and adult, rude and cul- 
tured ; the social sciences, as displayed in the or- 
ganizing and evolving races and peoples, with 
their advancing arts, polities, and civilizations ; 
and at last the religious sciences, as displayed 
in growing traditions, creeds, and cults, Pagan 
and Christian, ever struggling for ascendancy 
and prevalence. And it would thus be found 
that the evolutionary series of facts throughout 
space and time, at least as far as it has yet been 
traced, everywhere and always supports the 
corresponding series of sciences, ranging like 
mountain peaks, which rise one above another, 
from the solid ground, until they are lost from 
view in the clouds. 

In further proof and illustration of this 
order of the sciences, let it be observed, in the 
first place, that it is also the order of their his- 
toric evolution. It is true, such a coincidence 
would not be indispensable. The historic pro- 
cedure is not always and necessarily normal or 
philosophical. There have been great ebbs and 
floods of the sciences, as Bacon expressed it, 
with the rise and fall of empires. Man, too, is 



64 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

not the measure of nature, and to an intellect 
sufficiently enlarged or able even in fancy to 
free itself from terrestrial limitations and vicis- 
situdes, the true universal order of knowledge 
might still appear accordant with the universal 
order of facts however much it had become 
confused in the human consciousness, or de- 
ranged by the processes of human research. 
As a matter of fact, however, no such general 
confusion or lasting derangement has taken 
place. The history of the sciences shows that 
they have actually proceeded, and are still pro- 
ceeding, serially from simple to complex facts, 
throughout space and time. All the physical 
sciences have long been and still are greatly in 
advance of all the psychical sciences, and each 
in particular in advance of its predecessor — 
chemistry ahead of biology, and psychology 
ahead of sociology. The defects which Mr. 
Spencer has exposed in the Comtean series do 
not pertain to the serial principle itself, as 
more strictly and fully applied, and the mutual 
helpfulness and interaction of the sciences upon 
which Mr. Fiske has enlarged, have nothing to 
do with the question of their relative advance- 
ment in scientific exactitude and completeness. 
Astronomy, as a physical science, is centuries 
older than chemistry, as chemistry is at least 
half a century older than biology; and though 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 65 

the two younger sciences have given to astron- 
omy the spectroscope and the Spencerian theory 
of evolution, yet they have not thereby over- 
taken their elder sister in the race for exact 
knowledge. It is still true, in the main, that 
our science of the heavenly bodies is more per- 
fect than that of our own bodies and of sur- 
rounding phenomena, since we can predict 
eclipses centuries hence to the minute, while we 
cannot foretell the state of the weather or of 
our health a single week, simply because of the 
cumulative complexity and contingency of the 
latter class of facts. And judging the future 
by the past, we shall doubtless continue thus to 
master phenomena in the order of their relative 
generality and independence of one another. 
Tried, therefore, by any of the tests of scientific 
perfection — mathematical exactitude, theoreti- 
cal consistency, power of prevision — it will be 
found in all history that the simpler sciences 
have ever led and still lead the more complex 
sciences as in serried ranks without a break or 
a recoil. 

In the second place, this order of the sci- 
ences is also the order of our logical conve- 
nience. It is the true psychological as well as 
cosmological and chronological order. Even if 
it were not, we have maintained it would still 
be tenable as the only philosophical arrange- 



66 TEE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 

ment of knowledge. It is not to be presumed, 
in advance of any experience, that nature must 
present her phenomena to us in a strictly logical 
succession, adapted to our narrow faculties and 
modes of investigation, so that what is first 
and last in our course of reasoning must also 
be what is first and last in her course of devel- 
opment. Nor would any preconceived scheme 
of research which we might frame necessarily 
prove the most suitable and serviceable when 
applied in the actual process of scientific in- 
quiry. On the contrary, history has developed 
a scheme quite different from that which men 
might have anticipated as most probable, and 
which at times they have blindly pursued as 
most promising. Naturally engrossed with the 
adjacent and impressive phenomena of their 
own bodies and minds, they essayed for cen- 
turies to construct the mental before the physi- 
cal sciences, psychology and physiology in ad- 
vance of chemistry and astronomy. But now 
that by hard and long experience we have 
been forced to follow the order of facts in our 
researches we can see, in the light of our own 
failures and successes, that such an order is 
supremely rational as well as natural, and that 
in adopting it we are but acting on the logical 
principle that we must master the simple be- 
fore advancing to the complex phenomena, and 



THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 67 

study both in their essential dependence and 
connection. In other words, we have found 
that logically we must proceed from physics to 
chemistry, and from chemistry to biology ; and 
we are beginning to see that we must ascend 
through physiology into psychology and soci- 
ology, and that even theology as an empirical 
science must be studied in its historical devel- 
opment in human society before it can acquire 
all the data needed for its completion. Thus 
does nature, in spite of the perversity of man, 
like a severe yet kindly teacher, oblige him to 
begin at the lowest round in the ladder of the 
sciences, and toil patiently upward, from one 
degree of attainment to another, with increas- 
ing skill and ardor, toward the fulness of per- 
fect knowledge. 

In the third and last place, this order of the 
sciences is also the order of their practical im- 
portance. Mere utility, indeed, as we have 
already seen, is not a philosophical principle of 
classification, unless it be in the so called prac- 
tical sciences or scientific arts. It is conceiv- 
able that pure theoretical knowledge, following 
the general succession of facts in the universe, 
might proceed independently of man, or might 
prove wholly insusceptible of adjustment to 
his concerns. As it is, however, the most ab- 
stract science, though pursued only from a dis- 



68 TEE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

interested love of knowledge, will often in its 
practical applications surprise the world with 
vast benefits, and compel the vulgar to turn 
and heap their applauses upon the man whom 
they may have pitied as a stiff pedant, losing 
himself in wordy nonsense, or a mild enthusi- 
ast seeking new reasons for very old facts. 
Condorcet has strikingly observed, that the 
sailor, whom an exact calculation of longitude 
preserves from shipwreck, owes his life to a 
theory conceived two thousand years ago by 
men of genius who were thinking of nothing but 
lines and angles ; and in our own day we have 
seen a toy-like battery in the college lecture- 
room of Professor Joseph Henry become that 
miracle of modern civilization, the Atlantic 
Telegraph, in the hands of the more utilitarian 
inventor. And upon this principle as thus 
guarded, we shall find that the scale of the sci- 
ences with their issuing arts most wonderfully 
agrees with the scale of human interests ; the 
least important being at the base, and the most 
momentous at the summit, while those of sub- 
ordinate significance fill the intermediate ranks. 
To state it differently, man as the microcosm 
appears to have in his constitution a gradation 
of relations and capacities, corresponding to 
the gradation of phenomena which he seeks to 
know by his science and to modify by his art. 



THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 69 

The physical, chemical, and organical sciences 
lead up through the mineral, vegetal, and ani- 
mal kingdoms of which he is the organic head 
and lord ; while the psychical, social, and re- 
ligious sciences ascend through still higher 
realms of human interest toward the highest 
of which he can conceive : and in the train 
of these linked sciences follow such useful 
arts as commerce, manufactures, agriculture; 
such aesthetical arts as music, painting, arch- 
itecture ; and such moral arts as medicine, 
jurisprudence, "and divinity. So does science, 
in conducting her votaries through the diffi- 
cult school of nature, reward their fidelity 
with ever-gathering laurels and trophies for 
the advantage and exaltation of our -common 
humanity. 

If we now seek for a compact result of this 
discussion in some convenient working classifi- 
cation, which shall be adapted to the exist- 
ing state of our scientific knowledge, without 
expressing its more theoretical domains and 
boundaries, we may obtain it by arranging, as 
in the following table, a parallel series of prin- 
cipal or capital sciences, embracing only such 
provinces of facts as are now actually under 
scientific investigation and bearing familiar 
names, etymologically descriptive of their areas 
and limits : 



70 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 



FUNDAMENTAL SCIENCES. 



PRINCIPAL SCIENCES. 



Celestial 

and 

Terrestrial. 



Physical. 
Chemical. 
Organical. 
Psychical. 
Social. 
k Religious. 



Physical. 
Psychical. 



Astronomy. 

Geology. 

Anthropology. 

Psychology. 

Sociology. 

Theology. 



In this scheme each Principal Science repre- 
sents, in a concrete form, the parallel group of 
Fundamental Sciences to which it corresponds, 
and includes, as its special domain, all of those 
Fundamental Sciences from which it is not ex- 
cluded by its immediate predecessor and suc- 
cessor in the series. Astronomy, the science of 
the stars, being the most comprehensive science 
in space and time, embraces the whole region 
of celestial physics, chemistry and organics, and 
the unknown realms of celestial ethics and 
politics, together with the unsolved problems 
of the origin and destiny of galaxies, suns and 
planets. Geology, the science of the earth, as 
distinguished from the other planets, embraces 
the region of terrestrial physics, chemistry and 
organics, with the unsolved problems of the ori- 
gin and destiny of the globe, and of the stratas, 
floras and faunas upon its surface. Anthropol- 
ogy, the science of mankind as distinguished 
from the other animal races, includes physiol- 
ogy, ethnology, philology, archaeology, together 
with the unsolved problems of the origin and 
destiny of human races, languages and arts. 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 71 

Psychology, the science of the mind as distin- 
guished from the body, embraces aesthetics, logic, 
and ethics, with inquiries into the origin and 
destiny of the soul and the development of its 
sensations, cognitions and emotions. Sociology, 
the science of society as distinguished from 
the individual, includes technics, economics, 
and politics, with inquiries into the origin and 
destiny of the family and the state, and the 
development of civilization. Theology, the 
science of religion, as distinguished from poli- 
tics, includes comparative and theoretic theology, 
with inquiries into the origin and destiny of tra- 
ditions, creeds, and cults, and the development 
of essential religion. And thus the sciences 
tower upward to a summit, from whence, as 
from a mountain peak, we may survey the vast 
region of human research, with its remote front- 
iers fading into the far horizon of infinite space 
and time, and its nearer provinces, spread out be- 
neath us, like cantons bounded by thread-like 
hills and rivers, and dotted with shining cities 
and villages, that serve to mark how far the 
works of man have encroached upon the wilds 
of nature. 

We have at length reached a point in the 
investigation where some larger and more pre- 
cise definitions of science are needed. Hith- 



72 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

erto we have simply maintained that facts are 
the material of scientific knowledge, without 
inquiring into the cognitive process itself ; but 
facts, in the course of that process, as it is well 
known, have become decomposed into their sub- 
jective and objective elements under the names 
of phenomena and noumena, the former refer- 
ring to things as they appear or are manifested 
to our senses, and the latter to things as they 
exist by themselves and only in our thought. 
And it is now a moot question whether nou- 
mena as well as phenomena should be included 
within the field of scientific inquiry, or, in 
other words, whether only the patent laws of 
facts, their mere coexistences and successions, 
or also their occult substances and causes, are 
scientificably knowable. To this question may 
be applied our next principle. 

IV. A philosophical scheme of the sciences 
should embrace both their empirical and their 
metaphysical divisions in logical correlation. 

The important distinction between empiri- 
cal and metaphysical inquiry which obtains in 
every class of facts, and therefore in every sci- 
ence, is as old as Aristotle, was emphasized by 
both Bacon and Newton, and at length thor- 
oughly excogitated by Berkeley, Hume, and 
Kant. But it has been reserved for Comte to 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 7$ 

formulate it into a supposed law of scientific 
development under which, it is claimed, that 
the empirical region of phenomena and laws 
have been finally separated from the metaphys- 
ical region of entities and causes as by an im- 
passable gulf, and the former retained as the 
only legitimate field of positive science, while 
the latter is to be forever abandoned as a mere 
realm of superstition and speculation. Whatever 
may be said of the truth or error of this law, 
viewed simply as a law of the evolution of em- 
pirical science, it cannot be denied that by pro- 
claiming it, Comte has done a lasting service to 
both parties in the controversy, and opened the 
way, however unwittingly, to a just and final 
definition of their several provinces and fron- 
tiers in the domain of philosophy. Never be- 
fore has the breach between them been made 
so conspicuous; never before have they been 
so freed from mutual restraint and interference, 
the empiricist from the wings of speculation, 
and the metaphysician from the clogs of expe- 
rience ; never before have they proceeded 
apart, each his own way, to so wild extremes, 
as for example in the systems of Comte and 
Hegel ; and consequently never before has the 
philosophic mind been so favorably poised for 
healthy reactions towards the true, safe, inter- 
mediate position. Tn calling attention to some 



74 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

of these reactions from the empirical side, my 
present aim is not at all to enter a plea for the 
study of metaphysics, still less to discuss its 
methods, but simply to claim for it its due 
place on the chart of the sciences. If it would 
be unphilosophical, as we have seen, to exclude 
any known class of facts from the field of legiti- 
mate research, still more unphilosophical would 
it be to debar any portion of their reality from 
investigation, merely because it rests under an 
opprobrious name, or has hitherto seemed to 
baffle inquiry. No scheme of the sciences 
eould be complete which would shut out one 
entire hemisphere of existence from view as 
effectually as if it were the farther side of the 
moon. Its very occlusion and mystery have 
been a constant challenge to the greatest in- 
tellects of our race, and the recent discoveries 
in physical science, especially in celestial phys- 
ics, if not themselves largely metaphysical tri- 
umphs, should at least warn us that the most 
transcendental realms of nature, through un- 
locked for avenues, may yet be thrown open 
to our curiosity, and have their nebulous vague- 
ness resolved into lucid stars and worlds of life. 
At the outset of this inquiry, it should be re- 
membered that Comte himself merely ignored 
the metaphysical region, arbitrarily and indeed 
somewhat contemptuously, but without erecting 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 75 

any cognitive theory as a barrier against it. In 
this reserve he was, perhaps, wiser than some 
of his disciples and critics. It was enough for 
him to restrict enijjirical or positive science to 
the study of observed phenomena, and turn his 
back upon all inquiry into their essential na- 
ture and origin as mere infantile curiosity or 
vain speculation. And he claimed to do this, 
as we have said, not in virtue of any metaphysi- 
cal doctrine of knowledge and being, which he 
had framed, but in consequence of an empirical 
law which he had discovered, and which he ap- 
plied to the positive sciences alone, without so 
much as examining the claims of metaphysics 
to any different method and procedure. It is 
plain, therefore, that metaphysic has suffered 
no curtailment or invasion from Comte other 
than the popular fling at it, which its name may 
convey. Indeed, it was his habit to stigma- 
tise as metaphysical, not merely all essences 
and causes, but even such phenomena as seemed 
to him inaccessible because of their remoteness 
and complexity ; and he rashly forbade certain 
problems in sidereal dynamics, geology, and bi- 
ology, which have since been solved, or are in 
a fair way to solution. In a word, his whole 
system is purely negative in its bearing upon 
true metaphysics. Even though it were fully 
adopted, it would still be not incompatible, as 



76 THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 

Stuart Mill has shown, with sound metaphysi- 
cal conceptions of time, space, force, life, and 
mind; while, if freed from its grotesque theory 
of religion, it might even be held consistently, 
as it has been actualty, with some of the most 
transcendental forms of theology. " The Eng- 
lish positivism," says M. Janet, distinguishing- 
it from the French, " has a psychology and a 
metaphysic, and consequently treats of prob- 
lems which are not in the domain of the posi- 
tive sciences." German and Italian positivism, 
also, according to Professor Barzellotti, are " at 
bottom metaphysical." 

But whilst Comte was thus content simply 
to ignore the metaphysical realm as unknown, 
Mr. Herbert Spencer has essayed to prove it 
also unknowable, partly from the relative nature 
of our cognitive faculties, and also from the con- 
tradictory character of our ontological concep- 
tions. A passing remark upon each of these 
points seems requisite. 

As to the doctrine of relative knowledge, the 
cardinal tenet of the school, it may be doubted 
if there has ever been a controversy involved 
in such mere word-puzzles and logomachies. 
When Professor Fiske, tersely putting the case 
with so much apparent clearness, affirms that 
" no patience of observation or cunning of ex- 
periment can ever enable us to know the merest 



THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 77 

pebble as it exists, out of relation to our con- 
sciousness," every thing depends upon the defi- 
nition of consciousness. If it simply means in- 
tellect or knowledge, the statement amounts to 
the mere truism, that we can only know the peb- 
ble through our knowing powers; but if con- 
sciousness include subject and object as usually 
defined, and the meaning is, that we can only 
know the phenomenal and not also the non-phe- 
nomenal part of the pebble, then the statement 
is very far from being true. We can know both, 
and the latter even more scientifically than 
the former. We can know, in general, the in- 
dependent reality of the pebble, the fact of its 
existence out of relation to our consciousness, 
and we can know in particular, and with scientific 
accuracy, some of its non-phenomenal realities, 
the infinitesimal atoms, the immaterial crys- 
talline forces, the insensible ethereal properties 
which lie folded within and behind its phenom- 
ena, and which can never by their very defini- 
tion, be phenomenally manifested to us, or even 
distinctly imagined. In a word, we can know 
both the otherness and the inwardness of the peb- 
ble, the thing as it exists by itself and in itself, 
and among its essential relations to other nou- 
mena, as well as in its accidental relations to our 
consciousness. 

Mr. Spencer himself admits what he terms 



78 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

a " transfigured realism," that there is at least 
some objective existence, though its modes and 
their connections may not be objectively what 
they seem. And Professor Tyndall has most 
abundantly and clearly shown in his eloquent 
lecture on " The Scientific Imagination, " that 
beyond the range of phenomena, and beyond 
the reach of our senses or of any possible micro- 
scope, there is a world of extra-sensible realities, 
in other words of metaphysical entities, where 
science still reigns in all the rigor of mathemati- 
cal exactitude. 

As to the other point, the ontological para- 
doxes, largely derived by this school from the 
writings of Hamilton and Mansel, it is enough 
to say at present that such arguments can only 
return to plague the inventors. If it be main- 
tained that all our ultimate ideas of time and 
space, cause and force, the infinite and the abso- 
lute, when excogitated, will develop endless con- 
tradictions from which we cannot escape — this 
would simply be proving too much for the pur- 
pose. The empiricist who accepts these results 
must be content to openly build his whole sys- 
tem of positive science upon confessed absurdity 
as well as nescience, while the metaphysician 
who rejects them may still retain all that is 
true in positive science, and at the same time 
seek for it a more rational basis. And that the 



TEE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 79 

reasoning is impracticable, as well as somehow- 
fallacious, has been conspicuously shown by its 
own authors, who, not deterred by the logical 
torpedos which they had planted in the shoals of 
the metaphysical ocean, have themselves sailed 
out sheer beyond them on voyages of the most 
adventurous speculation. Mr. Spencer, whilst 
professedly renouncing and abolishing all meta- 
physics, has, nevertheless, on the basis of his 
own doctrine of knowledge and existence, pro- 
ceeded to erect one of the most imposing meta- 
physical systems of the world which has ap- 
peared in modern times. Beginning with' the 
transcendental mysteries of primordial matter 
and force, as displayed throughout infinite space 
and time, he has exhibited to us a universe in 
evolution, from the most ancient nebula in the 
depths of immensity up to the most recent com- 
monwealth upon the surface of our planet, the 
whole proceeding under fixed progressive laws 
which carry with them, in spite of all disclaim- 
ers, as the late Mr. Chauncey Wright has clearly 
shown, a cosmological and even teleological im- 
port, at least as much of order, fitness and result 
as may be seen in a poem or a drama, however 
devoid of mere human interest and utility. 
And this evolving and dissolving universe he 
has described as the phenomenal manifes- 
tation of an Absolute Reality or Persistent 



80 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

Force, of which we can know nothing except as 
it may be known in and through the intelligible 
cosmos which it upholds and which is insepa- 
rable from it even in our thought. Professor 
Fiske, besides expounding the Spencerian cos- 
mogony with great acuteness and force, has 
based it more firmly upon a purified theism, 
and done special service on the metaphysical 
side of theology by exposing very fully a gross 
form of error known among orthodox divines 
from the time of Tertullian as anthropomor- 
phism, or the tendency to clothe Deity with hu- 
man imperfections and passions. Nor can it 
be said that the value of these metaphysical 
contributions is destroyed by the contradictory 
elements which they somewhat accidentally in- 
volve, since there are those who know how to 
disengage them in a pure state, and render them 
compact and congruous with a very different 
theory of knowledge and being. 

Besides such unwitting testimonies, there have 
also been open avowals in the same quarter. 
11 England's thinkers," said Stuart Mill, "are 
again beginning to see, what they had only 
temporarily forgotten, that the difficulties of 
metaphysics lie at the root of all science ; that 
those difficulties can only be quieted by being 
resolved, and that until they are resolved, posi- 
tively whenever possible, but at any rate nega- 



THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 81 

tively, we can never assume that any knowledge, 
even physical, stands on solid foundations." 
And soon, as if to fulfill these words, appeared 
Mr. Lewes, breaking the ranks of the positivists 
with a flag of truce in his hand, and proposing 
to annex the whole extra-sensible province of 
metaphysics and leave the remaining super- 
sensible region to so-called metempirics and di- 
vines. At the same time the scientific litera- 
ture of the day has become leavened with a 
sort of speculative physics which, so far as it 
goes, is simply metaphysics without the name, 
and as recondite as any that has reigned in the 
schools. " Even some great captains of science," 
exclaims Mr. Lewes, with the enthusiasm of a 
convert, " while standing on triumphal cars in 
the presence of applauding crowds, are ever and 
anon seen to cast lingering glances at those 
dark avenues of forbidden research, and are 
stung with secret misgivings lest, after all, those 
avenues should not be issueless, but might some 
day open on a grander plane." In the midst of 
his physical discussions, Grove was constantly 
coming on what he termed "the alluring paths 
of metaphysical speculation." Faraday for a 
Ion or time doubted whether the conservation of 
energy should not be treated as a metaphysical 
question, though at length he decided to view 
it only on its physical side. And the veteran 



82 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

Professor Tait was doubtless only speaking for 
the great mass of scientific men when he de- 
clared, in a recent lecture on physics : "There 
is a science of metaphysics, but from the very 
nature of the case the professed metaphysicians 
will never attain to it." 

Inasmuch then as both the new school of 
scientific metaphysicians and the old school of 
professed metaphysicians are together entering 
and re-entering the trodden field, though from 
opposite sides, and already coming in sight of 
each other, it may not be too soon to look for 
their friendly meeting on common ground, or 
at least to arrange the terms of correspondence 
and peace. Every day, it is becoming evident, 
in the progress of research and of thought, not 
only that each science has its metaphysical as 
well as empirical portion, but also that the two, 
throughout the series of sciences, are in close 
correlation ; so that the most advanced discov- 
eries at length abut upon some metaphysical 
problem, while the most advanced speculations 
still depend upon some empirical investigation. 

In physical science, we have been led beyond 
masses and molecules into a universal aether, 
quivering between matter and spirit, at once 
phenomenal and non-phenomenal, impressing 
our senses in sound, heat, and light, and yet it- 
self as occult as any quiddity of the school- 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. S3 

men. In chemical science we have penetrated 
through solids, liquids and gases, among infin- 
itesimal atoms, so definite that they can be 
mathematically weighed and measured, and yet 
so indefinite that no microscope will ever de- 
tect them ; now grouped as solid spheres, cubes 
or rings, and anon clustered as mere spaceless 
centres of force. In or^anical science, we have 
advanced through varying animal and vegetal 
forms to an ultimate protoplasm, composed of 
lifeless atoms, yet endowed with living forces 
an almost infinitesimal cell, and yet a very mic 
rocosmof molecular wonders; wholly structure 
less in itself, and yet the source of all the man 
ifold structures of the organic kingdom. In 
psychical science, we have ascended through 
the tissues, the nerves, and the senses, to an in- 
dividual mind, unseen yet ever seeing, enslaved 
in matter, yet keeping an ideal empire over 
material nature, localized in the brain, yet em- 
bracing the remotest sidereal heavens in its 
scope. In social science, we have emerged 
among associated minds, organized in perishing 
bodies, yet transfiguring all surrounding nature 
into a new world of art ; fast bound in differ- 
ent lands, tribes, and tongues, yet knitting 
continents together with telegraphic nerves 
and enveloping the world with instantaneous 
thought ; ever dying, yet transmitting to future 



8-4 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

ages the ideas of long-extinct civilizations. 
And at length in religions science, we have 
risen above all finite mind, individual or social, 
in full view of the one Infinite Mind, invisible 
and incomprehensible, yet manifested in nature 
and revealed to humanity through all intelli- 
gible forms. 

At the same time, on the empirical side of 
this ascending scale of the sciences, we now 
find a projected series of correlated forces, 
physical, chemical, organical, surmounted with a 
series of co-ordinated wills, individual, social, 
divine ; while on the metaphysical side of the 
same scale of the sciences we find a corre- 
sponding series of efficient and final causes, 
rising from some great first cause toward some 
ultimate supreme end, by the subordination 
of the mineral to the plant, the plant to the 
animal, the animal to man, the individual to 
society, and society to Providence. And now 
it remains to bring these two complemental 
series into their due logical dependence as 
supporting segments of one and the same, 
arch ; to connect forces with their causes 
laws with their purposes, means with their 
ends, throughout nature, as fast, but only as 
fast as science discloses them; to show that 
sooner or later we reach a point where, in the 
view of both the empiricist and the meta- 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 85 

physician, all forces appear as but potential in 
one Fundamental Energy, and all laws as but 
methods of one Universal Mind; and thus 
to trace, though as yet in part and step by 
step, the career of the Absolute "Will proceed- 
ing rationally toward the Infinite Reason, 
through the physical and psychical phenomena 
in which it is exerted and expressed through- 
out immensity and eternity. 

That the two opposite sections of the sci- 
ences do thus tend to unite as complemental 
hemispheres of truth, has long been a rational 
presentiment, if not an accepted result among 
the comprehensive intellects that are capable 
of including them both in their thought. Ba- 
con, though he remanded final causes to meta- 
physics, and efficient causes to physics, still 
maintained that the two agree excellently 
together as expressing the intentions of Provi- 
dence in the consequences of nature. Newton, 
while he bade physics beware of metaphysics, 
would have us proceed from motions to the 
forces producing them, and in general from 
effects to their causes, and from particular 
causes to more general ones, till we come to 
the First Cause, which is certainly not mechani- 
cal. Herschel thought it but reasonable to re- 
gard the force of gravitation as the direct or 
indirect result of a consciousness or a will exist- 



S(y THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

ing somewhere. The distinguished natural- 
ist, Wallace, has deemed it no improbable con- 
clusion, that all force may be will-force, the 
only primary cause of which we- have any 
knowledge, and thus the whole universe de- 
pendent on the will of one Supreme Intelli- 
gence. Professor Cooke, of Harvard, claims it 
to be a legitimate deduction of science, based 
upon the only analogy that nature affords, that 
the energy which sustains the universe is the 
will of God, and the law of conservation only 
the manifestation of His immutable being. 
As the movements of the body, says Professor 
Young, the astronomer, are the actions of the 
personality which inhabits it, so must we re- 
gard all the wonderful interactions of atoms, 
and masses of matter as in some way the 
action of the all-pervading intelligence and 
power. There is also a teleology, says Professor 
Lange, the historian of materialism, which is 
not incompatible with Darwinism, but almost 
identical with it, and there are ideal develop- 
ments and speculative extensions of this cor- 
rect teleology, which lie in a transcendental 
sphere, but for this very reason can never come 
into conflict with the natural sciences. 

Such testimonies — and a host of others which 
might have been cited — are not the foregone 
conclusions of professed metaphysicians and the- 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 87 

ologians, speaking in the supposed interest of 
orthodoxy, but the careful deductions of prac- 
ticed investigators, seeking in a strictly philo- 
sophical spirit, to give unity to their scientific 
knowledge, and find rational postulates on 
which to base a consistent theory of the uni- 
verse. And even the extreme empiricists and 
metaphysicians, as they build their systems 
apart from each other, can only appear in the 
view of larger, architectonic minds, like work- 
men unwittingly constructing counterpart frag- 
ments of the same structure. The world may 
yet see the " persistent force " of Spencer identi- 
fied with the " absolute will " of Schopenhauer, 
the aimless cosinosjof Comte supported by the ab. 
solute reason of Hegel,and the conflicting will and 
reason of Hartmann harmonized in the Chris- 
tian conception of a wise and benevolent Creator. 
Descending, however, from these remote 
questions, we now have before us a series of sci- 
ences, half empirical, half metaphysical,arranged 
as classified objects of philosophical study. 

Philosophy 
or 

Scientia Scientiarum. 



Empirical region of 
phenomena and • 
laws. 



Theology. 

Sociology. 

Psychology. 

Anthropology. 

Geology. 

Astronomy. 



Metaphysical region 
of essences and 



causes. 



8 8 THE 0BDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

There is but one more problem which this 
series presents for investigation. It is perhaps 
the most difficult problem that can task the 
philosophic mind, and yet a problem that is 
likely to grow in interest and importance with 
the general growth of knowledge. I can do 
little more than briefly state its terms in the 
form of a concluding proposition. 

V. A philosophical scheme of the sciences 
should have its completion in a general science of 
all the other sciences, based upon their historical 
and logical evolution. 

If such a last supreme science be at all feas- 
ible, its high claims cannot be questioned. 
Without it the sciences, even if complete in 
themselves, might still appear as mere frag- 
mentary masses of knowledge, having no ra- 
tional coherence and no orderly progression. 
And to forego the search for it merely because 
of its intricacy or difficulty would be as un- 
philosophical as to abandon any other class of 
involved phenomena ; for the sciences are them- 
selves phenomena, mental and social phenom- 
ena, and are presumably regulated by laws 
which may yet be ascertained. Certainly no 
scheme of human knowledge could be complete 
which did not at least provide for this remain- 
ing field of inquiry, nor would the scientific 
propensity itself be exhausted and satisfied un- 



TEE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 89 

til it had entered that field and held it as its 
crowning conquest. 

As the first condition of such a science, it is 
plain that all the other sciences must at least 
have come into being, and reached some degree 
of development. To attempt even to project it 
without such data, would be like attempting a 
science of those remote stars, whose orbits and 
periods can only be ascertained by successive 
generations of astronomers, or like attempting 
any science by mere a priori speculation, in ad- 
vance of a full knowledge of the facts upon 
which alone it could be based. Moreover, sci- 
ence being a function of society, rather than of 
the individual, society itself, with the individ- 
uals composing it, must have reached a mature 
stage of intellectual development before it could 
clearly seize and solve the problem of organiz- 
ing the sciences and arts which it had pro- 
duced. It was in plain disregard of this pre- 
liminary condition, that the elder Fichte, in his 
otherwise masterly work, essayed by mere re- 
flection and reasoning, and in defiance of all ex- 
perience, to construct a general science of knowl- 
edge, which should " furnish the ground, not 
only of all as yet discovered and known, but 
also of all discoverable and knowable sciences," 
and which should " absolutely and uncondition- 
ally determine what man can know, not only on 



90 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

the present stage, but on all possible and con- 
ceivable stages of his existence." And it was 
one of the chief merits of Comte that, instead 
of following his predecessors in their transcen- 
dental search for a metaphysical theory of cog- 
nition, he apjDroached the problem of a philoso- 
phy of the sciences through the study of the 
history of the sciences, as they have been dis- 
played in all past society, as well as in the in- 
dividual consciousness. Both attempts have in- 
deed issued in acknowledged failure, but the 
latter was at least in the right direction, and 
may serve to point out the way to future suc- 
cess. 

As the second condition of such a science, 
we should include among its data not only all 
the other sciences, but all the existing contents 
of those sciences, metaphysical as well as em- 
pirical, without prejudice and without parti- 
ality. History now exhibits to us, in both 
sections of the sciences, the accumulated results 
of several thousand years of human thought and 
inquiry ; on the empirical side, an immense 
mass of facts, theories, and hypotheses handed 
down to us by seers, sages and scientists of 
illustrious name and memory ; and on the 
metaphysical side a vast body of truths, doc- 
trines and dogmas, attested by prophets, divines 
and thinkers of equal eminence and authority ; 



THE ORDER OF TEE SCIENCES. 91 

while of neither side can it be said that it has 
been abandoned by the great majority of leading 
minds at the present clay. And until all these 
intellectual materials have been thoroughly 
sifted and tested, and their scientific value ascer- 
tained, it would plainly be unphilosophical to 
prejudge and exclude either class of them, or 
any portion of them. They are the mental and 
social phonomena which must be accounted for 
and explained in any consistent and compre- 
hensive science of human knowledge. To offer 
a theory of the sciences which should ignore 
either the empirical or the metaphysical doc- 
trines which they now contain would simply be 
a hasty generalization or induction, drawn from 
only part of the facts, and destined, it may be, 
to share the fate of all crude hypotheses. It 
was the capital mistake of Comte that, while 
aiming to trace the entire intellectual evolution 
of humanity, he confined his historical survey 
to a few nations and to the empirical region of 
the sciences, cutting off their whole transcen- 
dental region with mere epithets as " theologi- 
cal " and "metaphysical." But the healthy 
separation of empirical research from meta- 
physical knowledge does not necessarily lead 
to the destruction of the latter ; nor does the 
substitution of some new scientific hypothesis 
for some old theological dogma invariably in- 



92 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

volve a lasting logical antagonism between 
them. There are those (and they already form 
a large number), who can consistently hold the 
extreme theory of universal evolution together 
with the doctrine of absolute creation and find 
no insuperable difficulty in combining the two 
ideas in the conception of a personal Creator, 
immanent yet independent in his own evolving 
creation. So that even if positive science had 
succeeded in excluding theology and meta- 
physics from the whole empirical region, this 
would not prove that it had exterminated them 
or even freed itself from all philosophical con- 
nection within them. On the contrary, it 
would be much easier to prove from the trans- 
cendental tendencies of modern physical re- 
search, that the law of scientific development 
proposed by Comte, states but half the truth ; 
that the separation of empirical from meta- 
physical inquiry is not final and hostile, but 
convenient and salutary ; that a true philosophy 
looks forward to their reunion ; and that sooner 
or later all empirical science runs out into 
metaphysics, while all metaphysics must at last 
run up into theology, as the highest and 
most comprehensive of the sciences, whether 
empirical or metaphysical. 

It may be said, however, that a defect in 
Comte's argument has been supplied by other 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 93 

positivists or agnostics who have undermined 
and exploded the whole metaphysical section 
of the sciences by means of the doctrine of 
relative knowledge, and in particular that what 
has been termed the " deanthropomorphizing 
tendency" of modern science has proved fatal 
to the claims of the traditional theology. Hav- 
ing already noticed the former part of this ob- 
jection, we need only add a remark as to the 
latter. Mr. Fiske, in freeing the theistic the- 
ory of the universe from the grosser anthropo- 
morphism which lingers in the popular mind, 
has at times so nearly approximated the views 
of philosophic divines that it is not always 
easy to discern any essential points of differ- 
ence; but when he argues that intelligence, 
volition and personality cannot be attributed 
to the Deity whose existence he maintains, he 
is plainly beyond the tether of his own prem- 
ises. Until some one has succeeded in so far 
deanthropomorphizing himself as to take a 
position external to both the human subject 
and the divine object of cognition, and from 
thence to demonstrate that there is no analogy 
whatever between them, the mass of philos- 
ophers, with the rest of mankind, will continue 
to conceive of an infinite and absolute person 
as the true and only intelligible cause of the 
world. And this knowledge of Deity, though 



94 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

finite in its extent, may have even a firmer 
basis than the knowledge of other nonmena 
which do not manifest any correlate likeness to 
our minds, such as that of the Absolute Reality 
expressed to us and recognized by us in the 
whole phenomenal universe. The mere logical 
difficulty of conceiving or imagining such an 
Infinite Personality or Absolute Intelligence 
is a difficulty which cannot even be appreciated 
until after a feat of most abstract reflection, 
and which simply transcends, without contra- 
vening, the process of our thought, while it 
lies in a superhuman realm of mystery where 
neither the philosopher nor the divine should 
rashly intrude.* 

Without further digression into these inqui- 
ries, we may now return to our position that a 
comprehensive theory of the sciences cannot be 
framed until we shall have at least surveyed, 
and fairly estimated their metaphysical as well 
as empirical contents. The extreme empiricist 
will be ready to exscind from the material of 
such a science, the theological doctrines that- 
still stand in the way of his favorite hypothe- 
ses; as the extreme metaphysician will in like 
manner hasten to repudiate the scientific theo- 

* The conception of the Infinite and cognition of the Absolute 
have been more fully discussed by the author in ' ' The Final 
Philosophy," Part II., Chap. 3. 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 95 

ries which seem to menace his cherished dog- 
mas ; but the true philosopher will impartially 
retain both the doctrines and the theories un- 
der judgment, notwithstanding any seeming 
breach or disagreement between them, and will 
reject neither, while yet any available evidence 
remains to be produced. In a word, he will 
proceed to construct his science of the sciences 
in a scientific spirit, and from a sincere love of 
truth for its own sake. 

As a third condition of the proposed sci- 
ence — and the last I shall mention — it should 
include not merely all the sciences and all their 
contents, but also all legitimate instruments 
and factors of knowledge in the metaphysical 
as well as empirical region of those sciences. 
Since one design of such a science should be to 
furnish an organon or body of logical rules of 
scientific research and evidence, it would plainly 
be most unphilosophical to neglect or repu- 
diate any trustworthy means of information 
or investigation, merely at the bidding of cus- 
tom and prejudice, or because it had not the 
precision and force that might seem at first 
sight desirable ; and such unphilosophical con- 
ceit and partiality would become flagrant, if 
displayed in a quarter where additional cogni- 
tive resources were especially needed. Now, 
it has been shown by distinguished writers on 



96 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

the philosophy or logic of the sciences, such as 
Comte, Mill, and Lewes, that as we ascend the 
scale of the sciences our means of exploring 
them increase with their complexity and diffi- 
culty ; that in astronomy we are limited to ob- 
servation through one sense, and that sense 
mainly as armed with the telescope ; that in 
terrestrial physics and chemistry we have ob- 
servation through all the other senses, with 
the additional aid of experiment ; that in biol- 
ogy, besides observation and experiment, we 
have comparison of organs and species ; while 
in the mental and social sciences, where sensi- 
ble observation, experiment, and comparison 
can afford us but little aid, we have a direct 
personal consciousness and recorded history of 
the phenomena to be investigated. But this 
beautiful and luminous principle, according to 
the same school, must utterly fail us the mo- 
ment we pass from the empirical into the meta- 
physical section of the sciences, and begin to 
deal with insensible realities, powers, and prin- 
ciples. We then enter a region of " the Un- 
knowable," where the human reason at once 
loses itself in endless contradictions, or can 
only grope by vague intuition or rash specula- 
tion, with no extraneous light and guidance. 
At the very point beyond which our senses 
cannot lead us, we are told that we have no 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 97 

other faculties or appliances of knowledge. 
Even Mr. Lewes, though he claims a large ex- 
tra-sensible province of metaphysics as scien- 
tifically knowable, still insists that the supra- 
sensible world is wholly excluded from the 
field of research, and likens theologians and 
metaphysicians, or as he terms them " metem- 
pirical speculators," to the hapless seekers for 
perpetual motion. "All experience," he ex- 
claims, " is against you ; yet if you have any 
means of proving the existence of an organ 
which grasps realities beyond those given 
through sensible experience, we shall admit 
our error ; but till this is proved, we must hold 
your efforts to be misdirected." And he adds, 
that any conclusions brought from that out- 
lying region into the sphere of phenomena, 
become amenable to the canons of empirical re- 
search. To all which the theologians and meta- 
physicians might reply: "We accept the 
challenge on the conditions named. All expe- 
rience is not against us : the best experience of 
the race is with us ; not merely the experience 
of a subjective intuition or illumination, but 
the experience of an objective revelation from 
the Infinite to the finite reason through both 
nature and scripture. And this divine reve- 
lation has been empirically verified in history, 
and may be logically correlated with the hu- 

7 



98 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

man reason as a complementary factor of 
knowledge throughout the metaphysical sec- 
tion of the sciences." 

Let it be observed that I am not here dis- 
cussing these questions. It falls within the 
scope of this essay only to state them as prob- 
lems which must be met and solved by any 
philosophy which seeks to include and explain 
all the intellectual phenomena of humanity in 
history as well as consciousness. If philosophy 
be defined as the science of knowledge, it is 
plain that to determine whether there be a di- 
vine revelation, making known the otherwise 
unknowable, is a strictly philosophical ques- 
tion. It is as much a philosophical question 
as that of determining the validity, functions, 
and limits of the human reason as a source of 
knowledge. And in the present speculative 
crisis it is the most pertinent philosophical 
question which could engage the attention of 
the scientific world. We have grown familiar 
with a subtle agnosticism which threatens to 
extinguish one of the very eyes of philosophy, 
and paralyze an entire half of the body of knowl- 
edge. It claims to have demonstrated that the 
Absolute is unknowable, and a revelation 
therefore metaphysically impossible ; and in 
some of the higher circles of thought and cul- 
ture, it accepts this result with a tone of com- 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 99 

placent tolerance which should only proceed 
from assured knowledge. But all the while it 
is strangely forgetting, or more strangely ignor- 
ing an immense mass of empirical proofs of 
such a revelation, which date beyond the earli- 
est dawn of science, which have been accumu- 
lating for thousands of years in the view of the 
most piercing intellects of every generation, 
and which may claim to be as scientific in their 
nature as the astronomy of Copernicus, or the 
Prin cipia of Newton. And now it is for the 
philosopher, from his independent point of view, 
seeking all possible means of knowledge in 
the sciences, to sift this evidence, and decide 
whether it is scientifically probable. He may 
do this, if he will, with no moral or practical 
intent, from the mere desire to ascertain the 
limits and means of knowledge, as philosophi- 
cally as if he were examining an essay on the 
human understanding instead of a treatise on 
the Christian evidences. If he rejects those 
evidences, he will at least have certainty where 
before he had only conjecture ; but if he ac- 
cepts them, it will then be in order for him to 
admit the duly-attested divine revelation as a 
legitimate factor of metaphysical knowledge, 
and proceed to adjust it to the human reason 
as a corresponding factor of empirical knowl- 
edge in the scale of the sciences. 



100 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

If it be said that our evidence of such a rev- 
elation is confessedly not demonstrative, and as 
yet not certain enough to serve any philo- 
sophic or scientific purpose, though sufficient for 
the ends of religious faith — it may be replied, 
that it is evidence of the same kind, if not of 
the same degree as that which upholds the en- 
tire fabric of experimental knowledge. It 
should be remembered that there are sceptics in 
empirical as well as metaphysical science, who 
decry not merely our cognitive faculties, but 
the whole inductive procedure of reason. Pro- 
fessor Stanley Jevons concludes his logical dis- 
cussion of the principles of science with the 
assertion that the certainty of our scientific in- 
ferences is to a great extent a delusion ; that 
the uniformity of nature is an ambiguous ex- 
pression, and the reign of law an unverified hy- 
pothesis ; and that there is an infinite incom- 
pleteness even in the mathematical sciences. It 
is also well known, that some of the most 
practiced investigators and successful discov- 
erers have never mastered the logic which 
they unconsciously used in their researches. 
Yet this does not deter the philosopher from 
accepting the vast body of physical science 
which rests upon that logic. Nor does the fact 
that the logic of Christian evidence, though ever 
increasing is still incomplete, oblige him to dis- 



THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 101 

card that evidence together with the whole mass 
of metaphysical truth which it sustains. He 
need not reject revelation, or prejudge its con- 
tents, because its credentials have not all arrived. 
He may even find the internal evidence 
strengthening the external, as well as the exter- 
nal enforcing the internal ; science corroborat- 
ing revelation and revelation completing sci- 
ence, as the two ever mount together toward 
the fullness of absolute truth. 

Let him but once, on due evidence, admit 
revelation as well as reason into the sphere of 
philosophic inquiry, and his remaining task 
would not be difficult. He would find that in 
each science and through the whole series of 
sciences, the two factors of knowledge mutu- 
ally limit, support and complement each other — 
reason predominating in astronomy, where com- 
paratively little is revealable; revelation pre- 
dominating in theology, where comparatively 
little is discoverable; while neither predominates 
in the midway science of psychology, where 
the discoverable and the revealable are more 
nearly balanced. And it would thus appear, 
that in the metaphysical as well as empirical re- 
gion, our means of investigation increase with 
the difficulties which meet us, and that the 
sciences, instead of continuing as a mere medley 
of theoiies and doctrines, may be logically or- 



102 THE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 

ganizecl into a system of perfectible knowl- 
edge. 

With this general statement of the last and 
highest problem of philosophy, the object of* the 
present essay is accomplished. We have 
traced the history of previous attempts to 
classify human knowledge, and have examined 
the systems which survive in our own day. 
The result is a scheme combining any just prin- 
ciples upon which they have proceeded, but 
more accurately and fully applying those prin- 
ciples to the existing state of scientific knowl- 
edge. The sciences have been arranged in a 
serial order, corresponding to the different 
classes of facts which they have themselves dis- 
closed in their own progress. Theology, as 
well as psychology, has been added to the 
series and placed in its due rank and relations 
as an empirical science of religion. The em- 
pirical division of all the sciences has been put 
in connection with the metaphysical division in 
which they find their logical complement. And 
the whole series has been crowned with a 
terminal science of all the other sciences, de- 
signed for their organization and completion. 
Bringing all together into one view, we may 
picture the tree of knowledge as having its 
roots in logic and mathematics, its trunk ascend- 
ing through the physical and the psychical 



TEE ORDER OF THE SCIENCES. 103 

sciences with their several empirical and meta- 
physical branches, and its flower in philosophy 
as the science of the sciences, while its fruitage 
would appear in their correspondent arts. 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proce 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Sept. 2004 

PreservationTechnologie 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATI 
1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 
(724)779-2111 



